Sony announces in-game advertising deal with Double Fusion

http://www.ps3fanboy.com/2008/07/10/sony-announces-in-game-advertising-deal-with-double-fusion/

Posted Jul 10th 2008 3:30PM by Alan Tsang
Filed under: News

 

Phil Rosenberg, Senior Vice President of SCEA, announced a partnership today with Double Fusion, an advertising firm specializing in in-game advertising. Market research firm DFC Intelligence forecasts that worldwide in-game advertising industry will grow 1,150% by 2011 to $973.3 million, and "PlayStation is taking a major role in enabling this fast-developing sector that is both positive and inevitable for the games medium."

"We have already received tremendous support from publishers who want to incorporate ads into their PS3 games, across all of the regions of the world." Jonathan Epstein, president and CEO of Double Fusion stated. However, who these publishers are exactly is unknown at this time.

Last month, Sony announced a similar deal with another advertising firm, IGA Worldwide. How/if this affects the previous deal is unknown at this time. What are your thoughts? Are you okay with the product placement that is already in some games? What about actual advertising, however seamless it is? We feel this is an inevitable step in the evolution of the industry, but let's hope we never see an annoying pop-up ad during a gaming session.

[Via press release]

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This is their second in-game ad deal!

As long as A cocoa cola commercial or something doesnt interupt my game im good. I really dont understand why people make such an uproar about this sort of stuff.

It looks like one of the ways Sony is trying to make their Games Division profitable.

I honestly don't have any problem with ingame adds as long as it is done properly.

How is an ad done properly?

Example ads on clothes, on walls like Nokia ads in Tony Hawk.

Annoying, but it happens. If this means they have more money to throw around then it is probably a good thing.

If they don't affect the game than I don't see why anyone would care. Okay, maybe a Pepsi ad in Okami would be strange but most of the time these ads are set in modern or futuristic shooters and ads would actually increase realism. Plus it lets developers get more money to fund more games.

-Damn, i wish this wasn't my post 5,000 but I wasn't paying attention...

POST 5,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I book marked this so fast you can't even measure it in light seconds.

I told a friend almost 2 years ago to watch the PS3 have in game advertisments - he called "Burn out!"

I said no not like that, instead of playing the game and having transition screens you'll have commericals, while your in the middle of the game a banner will come up from the bottom advertising about the new honda accord. It's a system really, the gaming industry already got screwed up with technologists and we have greedy marketer executives now it goes into in game adds.

This will start out fine but as time goes on and the adds aren't paying off these companies will not want to pay such unfair ammounts to publishers and ask for a new contract, that contract will be more dependant on the acceptance of the game player - this is inevitable... Gaming really shouldn't have gone this way.

What I want to see is if gamers will abandon this as the theater aim of the PS3 means they can't put commericals in the game itself nor during the transitions, it would have to be at the begining of a session or the game and at the end - which in itself is a kill joy. Money will be lost, and fun will take the largest hit in the end.

Its not as bad as the fact that microsoft owns one of the biggest in game advertising companies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Incorporated

Massive Incorporated is an advertising company that provides software and services to dynamically host advertisements within video games. Massive Incorporated was purchased by Microsoft in May 2006 for approximately $200 million to $400 million. ^[1][2]

[edit] Service

The service, collectively known as The Massive Network, allows game developers to place advertisements within video games by providing a software development kit (SDK) and servers to host advertisements to be streamed to clients when the game is played. The streaming of advertisements allows old advertisements to be removed and more contextual ones applied in their place. Where games such as Need For Speed: Most Wanted had static advertisements for Cingular and Burger King^[3], advertisements supplied by a streaming network allow more temporary ads such as movie or TV show posters. Both the publisher and Massive can then continue to make money after the game has been sold.

The software is made so as to capture the proper demographic: it would be a problem to advertise an R-rated movie in an G-rated game or to place advertisements that conflict with a game's genre.

First, placement and layout of the advertisements is planned by the developers with help from Massive. Advertisements can be any texture, but to maintain realism, advertisements are generally placed on objects such as posters, billboards, storefronts, and other likely media. Massive calls this "Phase I: Design of the Inventory Elements."

Second, the SDK is integrated with the game to act as a client to Massive's ad servers. It allows the game to fetch the ad, display it on a surface, and analyze how the player acts around it. Massive refers to this as "Phase II: Integration of the Software Development Kit (SDK)."

Third is self-explanatory, "Phase III: Testing & Support." These are the software testing and deployment steps.