In-game adverting is an area I find to be rather interesting from two perspectives. First, I have always wondered why it has taken so long for game developers to incorporate real ads in their games. Second, will the advent of in-game ads result in cheaper game prices?
Let’s think about this for a moment…looking back at the some of the games back in the 80s like Out Run where this would have easily been possible, the ads that you saw on the side of the race tracks were fake ads. I always wondered why no one ever put actual ads. This could be said of many games up to the last couple of years. Even in the types of games where the characters travels through virtual cities or similar terrain, placing real ads on virtual billboards or posters on virtual walls would not see at all unusual.
Well it now seems that game developers are now starting to wake up and see the potential of in-game ads and are starting to capitalize on it. And this brings me to my second perspective…
When the additional revenues being brought in through these ads, are we now going to see the price of games go down? If you asked me early last year, I would have said a definite yes! Why? With potentially more money to be if a game can be played by a larger audience, simple economics tells us that game developers can potentially bring in more revenue by lowering the prices. But as you know, economics is never that simple. On one hand, the costs of game development have skyrocketed and these escalating costs are a big incentive for game developers to seek this additional revenue stream. On the other hand, there is still the question of whether gamers will be willing to pay the same price for games that now contain real ads. If gamers do not raise any protests, I predict that the price will go down, but only marginally… If the cable TV companies were able to eventually include ads with their programming and viewers still pay for cable, the game developers also have a shot at it too…
Posted on March 10th, 2007 by andai
Filed under: Misc
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