Ingame Advertising and Microsoft

July 17, 2006 on 8:43 am | In General Gaming, Innovation, Industry

Checking up on the daily update ring, I found this article over at Gamasutra interesting for its information on Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade. Then I read a shocker at the bottom:

Microsoft bought Massive Entertainment.

Ok, so where the heck have I been since May when this came out?!

I love how throwaway comments can contain so many levels:

Sullivan said this openess would also help publishers to link into in-game advertising company Massive, which Microsoft recently acquired. Further details of how this service will work, amongst other announcements, will be revealed at Microsoft’s GameFest to be held in Seattle, from 14-15th August.

Oh la di da, just another big company buying a small one.

To me, this is huge (pun purposely avoided). No longer should I bother tracking Massive's partnering with individual games. This has gotten much bigger now, more meta perhaps, holistic.

Microsoft isn't exactly involved in MMOGs. But with the success they've been having with Xbox Live Arcade, they offer an comparably relevant environment in which to provide dynamic advertising. Besides the Arcade and Marketplace interfaces themselves are the hundreds of games offered within them and Microsoft's control over what games get delivered and how. Complemented by still-growing community features, what Xbox Live Arcade lacks in a singular graphical client/chat-room functionality it makes up for by sheer numbers (they anticipate 6mil registered users by 2007) and potential.

And then there's the consideration of their Live Anywhere initiative (I thought they had been calling the "Connected Home" strategy) and how that impacts what advertising and content can be pushed where, beyond the Xbox and onto portable devices and the ubiquitous PC.

I'm very interested to see what transpires from this. I likely won't be at the GameFest in August, but I'll be eagerly awaiting reports from those who go.

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