During these last days, many news and rumors have been heard about this idea that seems to be haunting the companies that have been charging for all their content and that could take a turn to open the door to display advertising, with the idea of reducing their prices and gaining more users in the next years. Look if not Netflix, that in full turbulence due to this drop in the number of subscribers, many analysts speculate with the arrival of certain alternative formulas to that of paying a fee full price like the ones they have right now.
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Advertising in video games?
Microsoft also seems to have liked the idea and maybe in a not too distant time, we have ads in certain titles that we can play on the company’s consoles, such as its Xbox Series X|S. However, it is PlayStation that is now leading the rumors about a similar movement, which would lead it to incorporate some type of sponsored content with the intention of obtaining more income that (theoretically) would not affect the pockets of its users.
As reported Insider, these advertisements would appear within games of the modality free-to-play, that is, titles that do not require any payment to be used, as one more way for the studio to obtain some type of remuneration for its commitment to the project. Although there is a factor that is yet to be finalized and that is to know if Sony will take some percentage of the money generated by each ad, in the style of what other companies do when we talk about digital stores and download-only games.
The report also tells us that these ads would not appear in awkward places for the player during the game, but they would do it in decorative places within the game, such as billboards, etc. According to the same medium, these announcements would reach our consoles at the end of this same year, 2022, so the plan is already underway by the Japanese.
Will there be pushback from advertisers?
Video games have always been stigmatized and there are still companies that, for unknown reasons, they fear linking their image and their products to developments that contain some kind of violent or controversial element. That, in their way of understanding the market, they think that it could lead to a rejection by users and see how their sales fall due to these decisions.
But not only companies have this concern, there is another leg that does not have so much to do with the theme of violence, but with the reaction of gamers to such an invasion in this type of format. They fear that the anger of consumers will be so gigantic that when they see one of these ads, they will react by rejecting their products and, also, the video game itself. Overall, since it hasn’t cost them anything, what difference does it make if they go to another one that doesn’t offer us these advertising spaces?
Now we just have to wait and see if finally this idea is put into motion and pray that it is not a step in the wrong direction and that a decision made solely to generate more income does not backfire, generating more losses than anything else.
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