Brilliant. Well done MS!

Lol nice one MS

and boy did it have a lot of deals going on back then. You would associate almost all 3rd party games with MS. The only 3rd party games I can think of from gen 7 that make me think ps3 are Assassins Creed...... sorry that's it I ran outta them. 

Jesus Christ, people! Are you freaking serious? These are MEGA CORPORATIONS you're talking about here. Why do you give a shit whether they "play fair" in marketing or not? It literally makes NO difference to you.

Well, when I saw this in Metro I reached with my right hand over to the left of my dinner which was on the table in front of me and I knocked the whole lot off into the wall. The potato is still making its way to the floor from half way up the wall. I rang my lawyer and explained to him that Microsoft had induced a rage in me that once again ruined my dinner. He explained that he understood (for a nominal fee) but that no action was possible. So I took some of the broken plate off the floor and etched "Death to Microsoft and the man-devil, Phil Spencer" into the soft flesh of my arm and made a vow to bring down Microsoft and all their goons.

JK, we're having a nice interesting discussion. Doesn't really matter that its effect on us is minimal. 

Sure it's smart but it's also down right pathetic.
I remember that Destiny thing, how they down right talked about not being able to advertise, making it look like Sony was the bad guy. It's like they're forgetting they started this exclusive marketing crap. And Sony didn't do desperate crap like this either. Didn't they also do this for some other big 3rd party game other than Destiny and Star Wars?

Smart marketing department tbh.

For the people calling it pathetic: Don't go into business or marketing. :)

Ok? My assumption here would be most people here aren't. Also I haven't seen pathetic attempts of advertising in many advertisements in general so I don't know what you're talking about.

There's nothing wrong with it from MS's perspective. However I do have a bit of a problem with the publication being so cosy to an advertiser that they are willing to do deals like this. Basically this implies bias towards MS. But as far as I'm concerned MS is not doing anything dodgy or borderline.

But I question the effectiveness of it. Seems like they are just doing it because they can do it. I really question the actual benefit of exclusive marketing rights in terms of people who want the game thinking they need to by the console on which it's being advertised. The advantage is really in getting the console's name out there on more advertising space, the game doesn't really matter. So I think MS would have made better use of the advertising space by actually advertising something directly.

And Tomb Raider says,"Hey what about me, I AM actually exclusive to you, yet you spendf an entire page spread stealth advertising Battlefront? WTF man, what have you done for me lately?"

I love it. It brings a bit of fun to the industry and its very clever by their pr team. It most likely won't affect sales one bit but it always get the discussion going on forums :).