It's fine in MGS because Kojima always breaks the 4th wall. They always tell you to push the action button and talk about Blu-ray discs so why not add in an iPod and a PSP.

lololol

It's not game-breaking, but it sure ruins the atmosphere. What a joke. :/

but atleast the ad worked.
which other ingame ads get a forum topic about them?
also the ad reached to people who havent even played the game (like myself)

in game advertising always reminds me that what I'm playing is a "product".
Some games get away with it, but when I see things like coca cola/pepsi machines or other various placements it makes the game feel cheap.

Some games get away with it by being clever; usually if the placement has some reference to the game itself. Like if a coca-cola bottle is found in the dirt on a foreign planet, or if a city is called walmart-opia, or like in MGS4 how Snake has an ipod in his inventory among the other hi-tech killing equipment.

I don't have a problem with an ad on a tv in a game per-se, but I do with a billboard, because it's just RANDOM product placement. But it's still not that bad. I can forget about it.

Back to the tv ad, I think the worst part about it is that it is an actual tv ad from right now IRL. It's not a sign. It is forever fixed in these past couple months. It will never change, 5 years down the road how "realistic" will that be? It's different if it's a logo, or a bag of chips, or the actual product itself because the lifetimes for each of those things is a number of years, not a number of weeks.

I'll play those games in the future and think, "haha look at this product placement. I wish they'd left that out". However, if you see this ad in the future you'll think, "...this is really dated and poorly done".
Granted, the tv one has to be turned on, but it's not like you can miss it if what one poster here was saying is true, you're turning on tvs through the whole game AND it's an achievement. I don't think an ad really takes away from the gameplay, but it does take away from the integrity of the game.

I noticed the Verizon sign, and the Ford sync thing at the beginning and neither one bothered me.  Either I missed the tv with the commercial or I haven't come to it yet, but I doubt that one will bother me either.

I have yet to come across a tv that was located in "a very important and intense sequence"  that could jar me out of this surreal experience I was having.  So far they've all been found during lulls in the action, breaks between encounters...

To make a point about the batteries... umm perhaps someone missed the point... the Lamp Lady had been putting those away for years... Energizers are just as good... though I can imagine the Duracell commercials for Alan Wake... that would actually have been awesome

LOL!!!

I would so put that in my sig, if it wasnt broken.

But honeslty people, the billboard makes it feel more realistic.