Virtually any support is likely to be used as an advertising site, and Microsoft is in those, as can be deduced from one of the latest patents registered by Redmond. You can see the patent, whose title is “Offer personalized content for a non-intrusive online gaming experience” In this link, I reproduce his summary below and, after it, let’s spend a few minutes reflecting on what may be to come.
«One method of providing content to a user during gameplay includes determining that the user is interacting with a game provided by an online streaming provider and identifying an in-game time frame during which the user’s interaction with the game is predicted to game is below an interaction threshold. The method includes identifying a location within the game environment to overlay content during the time period and identifying content to display to the user. Content will be displayed via an overlay video stream separate from the gameplay stream. In real time of the user’s gameplay, the overlay video stream is sent to be displayed to the user simultaneously with the game stream to provide the content to the user at the identified location for at least a portion of the time frame.»
Ok, so the first thing is to clarify what the Microsoft patent refers to when it talks about “content” and “personalized content”. And it is not necessary to be particularly smart to understand that if, at the same time, we are also talking about a non-intrusive experience, what we are talking about is placing advertising within the game experience, something that can be very simple in some cases. , but also terribly complicated in others.
For example, if we think of a driving game, the billboards at the side of the road seem like a perfect location and that, indeed, they do not detract from the game experience. And also if we talk about a sports simulator, we are more than used to seeing advertising elements in them, be it on the billboards of a football field, on the car, on the helmet and on the overalls of a Formula 1 racer. 1 or on the jersey of a particularly popular skater.
It is different if, for example, we ask ourselves how it could be done in games like The Witcher, Horizon Forbidden West or Elden Ring. This reminds me of a film that went unnoticed at the time, State and Main, by David Mamet, but that already in the year 2000 was already anticipating this problem, by trying to place the advertising of a web page in the filming of a film whose plot takes place at the end of the 19th century. I won’t tell you how they do it at the end in case you haven’t seen it and this comment has aroused your curiosity, and I can tell you in advance that the movie is hilarious.
Be that as it may, the first thing that comes to mind is that Microsoft would be thinking about how to improve its income, both from the games produced by its studios and, especially, from the use of them by Xbox Game Pass subscribers. . Now, Phil Spencer has already anticipated that next year we will have price increases in the games, and possibly also in the subscription, so it seems a bit excessive that they consider taking both measures the same year, thus compromising the current Game Pass success level.
This grows in interest, however, if we combine it with other recent news about a survey carried out by Microsoft, in which they asked Xbox Game Pass users what they would think about the arrival of a new subscription level. And it is that it is enough to keep an eye on the market trends to propose, as a plausible hypothesis, that Microsoft is considering a cheaper version of Xbox Game Pass subscription that includes advertising.
In this way, Microsoft could add many more users, and improve the monetization of their accounts by adding the amount of the monthly fee to the income generated by advertising insertions, something that fits better with Microsoft’s plans to make Xbox Game Pass continues to grow in users and, therefore, in monetization.
What do you think? Do you think that Microsoft intends to insert advertising in all games and for all players, that it is considering a cheaper subscription to Xbox Game Pass with advertising, or that Redmond’s plans go through both possibilities?
