Fomalhaut30: People will accept almost anything given enough time and commonality of the act.
StingingVelvet: They accept things that might be wrong but that they don't give a shit about, like DRM.
And there are those that rail loudly about DRM, but accept it for things like Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, and Skyrim. Once you get your foot in the door with people, it's a lot easier to get them to accept more.
Fomalhaut30: The trick with ads is to start small so that people don't even really realize they're being used. Maybe have an in-game animated billboard that catches your eye. From there, move up to the splash screen ads before the games start, you know, like how they do the 87 screens of whatever technology is in the game. From there, make mini games within the game that give achievements/trophies or allow you to get free MS/PSN points. And so on and so forth until there's interactive ads that require you to do something to get 'em to go away.
There is a MASSIVE difference in your lead-ups and actual game-pausing video advertisements. MASSIVE. They're already gone nuts about loading screen ads and forced Sony and Eidos to remove them through bad press alone... you think they would stay quiet and accept actual game-pausing video ads? You're overly cynical and nuts.
This will be for streaming ad-supported content, if it is ever used at all.
Bad press is meaningless when the people see it in a game they really really want. People will compromise to get what they want.
Another thing...it's really tough to continually maintain outrage over stuff. Eventually, people will just give up and give in. The big companies can be patient and play the long game.
And like I said, you don't do it right away. You lead up to it. It's the same reason why SOPA/PIPA failed. They tried for too much too quick. They won't make that mistake again.
