The naivete is refreshing...

Yep. The current use of patents bears very little resemblance to the original intention of the patent system (i.e., granting innovative people a grace period for profit before the copycats come in). Basically, patents have become weapons in a multilateral cold war between corporations.

We probably can't tell (at this stage) whether Sony is planning to actively use this patent, or whether they are just loading up ammunition for future legal battles.

Meh. People will complain about this but buy the games and support the practice anyways.

The issue with completely intolerable things is that sadly two or three years down the road nearly everybody tolerate them, I remember not so long ago where the idea of having to activate a game online was also totally intolerable and even more recently so was always online single DRM, sadly I strongly suspect that in 5-10 years streamed, pay per minute, ads interrupted games will probably tolerated my most peoples.

What about the time EA put in-game ads in Battlefield 2142? Sure, it makes sense to put ads in F2P/social games and the like, but I wouldn't put it past Sony to put them in full priced games too.

I believe it was in a review of Bionic Commando (or some apocalyptic game where you could throw stuff around) that Yahtzee/Zero Punctuation mentioned there were Pepsi machines in the wasteland, but you couldn't pick them up and throw them at enemies presumably because Pepsi didn't want to associated with such brutality. (I found that rather amusing)

If the ads are done thematically and the players can affect them, it's not so bad.

Like say Fallout 3. If they had ads in there on the billboards and such, so long as those ads look faded/worn/etc., and fit the surroundings, it's one thing. But if those ads are bright, shiny, and new? Completely pulls you out of the immersion of being in the game.

Ads can be done right, but therein lies the rub. They have to be made to fit the world and not be blatant.

A WWE game once had banner ads for movies during loading screens.

what do you mean by this?

i complain about stuff i love and support all the time. if i didnt care, i wouldnt complain.


do you mean, "claiming to boycott, then buying?" i feel ya on that sentiment!

To go back to the BF2142 example, they had ads for Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs, and movies like Doomsday, I am Legend and Ghost Rider (!) in the game. Hardly what you'd expect to find in a post-apocalyptic 22nd Century North America. :P

I wouldn't mind seeing, say, ads for some futuristic version of Coke or Pepsi, or an Intel Core 19 Century CPU in a game set 200 years in the future. But that means time and money spent making actual dedicated art assets for the game that aren't even essential to the game outside of being a questionable way for the publisher to get additional revenue.

Sadly, that won't happen, because the ads will just be piped in from some generic ad server somewhere else. So the next time you'll be blasting Covenant in Halo 6 or Reapers in Mass Effect 5, you'll likely get some ad trying to sell you on an AT&T 3-year contract for a free iPhone. :P

I know NFS games from Underground series had ads for Cingular wireless too. As stated already by others, if it's implemented right, it's non-intrusive, and sometimes gives game bit more grip to reality, but interrupting gameplay for it is just asking for trouble.

Great! ... if its for a free service. I'm all for options.

If its for a pay service, I'll simply not use it. People tend to forget that we have the option to say no to things we don't like.

Gamersgate has already started something called Void where you can get games for free that have advertisements built into them.

http://www.gamersgate.com/void

Not exactly. There is a launcher that plays some ads before it launches the game. The games themselves are ad-free.

Sony's patent specifically covers ads which interrupt games. The difference may be small, but I think it's an important one for many users. Personally I don't mind ads per se, but they do become a problem for me if they interrupt the experience.

And yet, the movie industry now puts adds that are not previews of other movies during the previews segment (which is included into the movie's total runtime) at the theater.

Furthermore, some DVDs includes adds prior to the movie.

They probably figured they couldn't get away with putting adds right in the middle of the movie (essentially creating a commercial break), but they are experimenting with the boundaries of how much they can get away with when placing adds in a product that you paid for.

It's not just for the giants.

What really gets to me is that big corporations can use it to muscle up and coming small companies out of the way (who will struggle to pay the lawyer fees, nevermind the fines of a successful patent infrigement suit).

No matter what's your political angle, most would agree that this is not what policy makers should have in mind when they create laws.