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Will MSFS be next?

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By JESSICA MINTZSEATTLE (AP) - In-game advertising company Massive Inc. will broker ads for some of Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS)'s top video games this year, including the upcoming "Madden NFL 08" for Xbox 360 and personal computers.Massive, acquired by software maker Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) last year, said Wednesday it would begin serving dynamic ads to five new EA games - "Madden," plus "Nascar 08,""NHL 08" and "Skate" for Microsoft's Xbox 360, and "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08" for Xbox and PCs running Microsoft's Windows operating system.New York-based Massive sells virtual billboard space to advertisers, then delivers ads over the Internet to PCs and Xbox 360 game consoles.The company's technology tracks the seconds gamers spend in sight of an ad, then charges marketers for every 10 seconds of exposure. Advertisers can redesign their billboards or stadium ads to match current marketing campaigns in the real world.The company already delivers ads to two lower-profile EA titles, "Need for Speed Carbon" and "Def Jam Icon."Marketers around the world spent just $26.1 million on dynamic in-game advertising in 2006, according to estimates from Yankee Group, but the researchers project that figure will rise to $100 million this year and $645 million in 2010.Cory Van Arsdale, Massive's chief executive, said there is huge interest from marketers looking for ways to reach video games' sweet spot demographic: 18 to 34-year-old males, who, according to JupiterResearch, watch less TV than the average Web-connected American, but make up more than half of console gamers. If so, how will they do it?RH

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A burger king 737 and a Sony airbus 320 along with painted runways with the windows Vista logo and xbox360 advertisements.Would be a bit tacky though so I would assume they'll only slap in billboards on roadways if they do it at all.FS doesn't seem to be a good platform for in game advertising unlike sports games which model real world sports events dripping with commercial saturation.Ian.

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Maybe Sporty's or Aircraft Spruce painted on the roof of a barn. LOL


John
My first SIM was a Link Trainer. My last was a T-6 II
 

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If you think about it-Fs has been doing a great job of this for a while. Look at all the rw airlines represented in the sim by 3rd parties vs. the "generic" that come with fs(there was a time the airlines were upset about this!?)-lots of free advertising there. Then the avionics brands sitting in the cockpit-king, garmin etc.A few billboards next to roads and airports would be fine with me and also add a little atmosphere.I have always thought a push could be made with the real world avionics manufacturers/aircraft manufacturers for them to make sim counterparts of their real products. Not only good for their user base to learn to use their product but enticement for those that don't own them yet to use them, see how they work, and get frothed up to buy one!That would be a win/win situation in my book.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpgForum Moderatorhttp://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

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I have no use for in game billboards taking up yet more CPU / graphics horsepower.We don't have any to spare as it is!Glenn

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As the billboards would be just one more autogen object type I don't think it would make a difference. We already had the "chicken" fast foods in fs9-changing it to Burger King instead,or having generic buildings have rw company logos on them shouldn't change a thing performance wise. We also have the live billboards presently at Las Vegas in fs.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpgForum Moderatorhttp://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

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When they put those stupid ads in anything, then the anything I will never buy.In-game ads = ugly and tacky

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Game development has become so costly and expensive that the in add games maybe the only way to allow continued development of some games. Think about it, FS is maturing and with each release there is less features that can be added to it. So it reasons that MS might be selling less copies with each release. So revenues from a ads might be the difference between justifying a new release and not. Thus I am okay with it.

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Guest Redvan

rofl! that'd be funny

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Having realistic ads limited to comparable real-life locations, e.g. sponsor billboards around a NASCAR track, is not too bad. But there are a couple of possibilities that annoy me:1) You just *know* that after this gets in, advertisers will be demanding more prominent positioning. Already people playing that Rainbow Six FPS game set in Las Vegas are bombarded by bright eyecatching Chrysler ads.2) Tracking of how much time I'm viewing ads, thereby building up a unique personal profile to sell me more stuff.But if you think ads in games are bad, how about the whole Windows operating system becoming an "advertising framework" that dips into your own personal files to determine what ads to show you? This is not fantasy according to a patent that Microsoft has applied for. Check out this article about it: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070...re-systems.html

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What they need to do is... Build freeware airport sceneries with lots of bill boards near the airports and give it out.The better the quality of the sceneries more people would use it.;)Manny


Manny

Beta tester for SIMStarter 

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Guest liberalgeek

well...coke has a high school building on the flight line into seatac that has an entire roof painted with the coca cola logo.

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Guest liberalgeek

where in vegas are they...what do they say

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Guest christianholmes

Interesting topic...My brother is one of the co-founders of the *other* big in-game advertising company IGA. Truth is there are ads in way, way more games than most people know about. Game development is just too expensive nowadays, so developers look for ways to supplement their income.Let me give you the facts: In game advertising can DOUBLE the revenue a developer gets. Yes, double. Wouldn't you rather have a developer who is around making products than one who no longer exists because he was forced to shutdown after a title that didn't sell as well as hoped?I couldn't care less if they put ads in games. IGA puts ads in lots of games, and of course they are appropriate. Remember, the developer decides where to implement the ads- so they are not going to ruin their game just to put ads in it.

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Guest jshyluk

There's a lot to think about in this topic.1) Microsoft and EA are not the same. That isn't to say that MS doesn't want a share of advertising, but EA puts out way more game titles than MS does. If you count 3rd party developers for MSFS, then the numbers come closer, but still, EA has their thumb on more popular titles. It makes sense for advertisers to deal with the game publisher rather than the platform publisher the same way that marketing the Intel processor (remember the "Intel Inside" campaign?) worked better than marketing IBM. Still, there's no reason that the big game publishers and the big operating system publishers couldn't work together to deliver us more ads in our games and applications.2) The advertising budget in the article worldwide is slated at $26 million for this year. The cost to develop a top-tier EA title is in that ballpark, at least $20 million. I don't know how much it costs to produce a third-party add-on for MSFS, but I would guess much less than that. Even stuff that gets the Avsim Gold Star, like a TrackIR or a PMDG, products that every single aviation simmer should have in their collection, those things really only sell in the thousands, not the millions. The folks at NaturalPoint aren't swimming in money like EA or MS (although at the last AVSIM Convention, I seem to recall that NaturalPoint Kevin had been strutting around gold-plated and encrusted with jewels, but that was just for one afternoon, not the big banquet, and the gold was only 8kt. I also heard that NaturalPoint had to give the jewels back.) I'm not sure the advertising world would pay much attention to those numbers until they are ready to fill the niches left after the bigger markets are saturated. 3) Realistic repaints of aircraft liveries stem more from a consumer demand to see real world paint jobs, rather than airlines wanting to have their products showcased in MSFS. I am not convinced that real-world companies are ready to jump at the chance to have ham-fisted sim pilots at the controls of aircraft bearing their likeness. Even before the 9/11 tragedy, airlines saw MSFS as a way to showcase crashes. (REM//Insert jokes about Windows crashing here). Real world airlines are incredibly sensitive to media coverage of crashes. I'm not so sure about now in the age of instant news and the Internet that they do this anymore, but they did used to try to paint identifying livery marks and logos off of the remains of crash sites. If you watch a movie on a jet flight, they will edit out airplane crashes, even if it's a central plot point of the film. One minute Harrison Pitt and Gwyneth Alba are wrestling with the damaged controls of Air Force Two, then there's a snip, and suddenly there they are on the ground, clothes torn, hair frowzy, looking all theatrically stained and bloody, going, whew, that was a close one! Then, there was the big deal about Union Pacific threatening to sue the skin off of anyone developing a UP logo for MS Train Simulator, because they thought that Train Sim was a tool to teach people how to start up and run (and crash) trains. Is there enlightenement at the end of the tunnel? Seattle's very own Kenmore Air has stepped up to be the very first commercial airline to be featured in a version of MSFS right out of the box (Check out the FSX Beaver!).Well, these are some of my thoughts. They don't represent any actual position AVSIM.COM may or may not have regarding this topic. I just thought this was an interesting discussion. Jeff ShylukSenior Staff Reviewer, Avsim

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