Sony wipes out interfering ad from WipEout HD

by Alexander Sliwinski on Aug 4th 2009 9:10AM

Sony has removed a controversial in-game ad from WipEout HD, which slammed the hover brakes on the futuristic racer by increasing load times. A Sony representative informed GI.biz that the commercial was removed while the company attempts to make sure that ads do not affect gameplay. The obtrusive commercial was part of a new deal between Sony and Double Fusion, an in-game advertising firm. It's definitely not a good sign when the first ad out of the gate ends up being a picture-perfect example of consumers' worst fears about in-game advertising.

Source

Tags: ads, advertising, commercials, double-fusion, sony, wipeout-hd

Reader Comments (69)

Me too, my boner is completely gone now.

Guys, this is bad, but the video ads on the 360 dashboard are fuckin horrible too.
They increase the load time of the dash.

Why would Joystiq write about these ads, but not a peep about the silverlight video ads (with sound!) on the 360 dashboard?

good lord you guys have commercials on the xbox dashboard?!!

I've never once seen one of those.

You're never forced to view those ads.. Nor are they the 1st thing you see when you boot up the xbox. It's usually like the 2nd or 3rd box on the Spotlight tab, never the 1st. Not only are those skippable, you never have to view it at all if you don't want to.. Talking from expierence here, I've noticed the ads you mentioned but so far haven't wasted 1 second of my life viewing them.

If you guys bucked up and bought more PS3's maybe Sony wouldn't have to stoop to this level.

@eNrique

You don't like the Xbox we get it already...every comment you make is something negative about the 360.

Yeah, ozymoronx420, why doesn't Joystiq write about the annoying ads on Xbox Live? I mean, it's a PAID subscription to play online and yet they still have the audacity to stuff ads down my throat every time I turn on my Xbox 360 and it goes to the "Spotlight" section. It might as well be renamed the "Advertisement" section. Enough is enough. I pay for Xbox Live and since I paid for it I expect there to be no ads, since Microsoft makes more than enough revenue on Xbox Live Gold Memberships to not have ads in their system.

Yet, there still are ads. This is the worst thing to EVER come to video games, because if I have to pay $50 a year just to get stuffed with more ads, I'm just going to cancel Xbox Live and just get one month/three month cards if I wanted to play online. I'm surprised no one has even spoke up about the ads on Xbox Live yet.

You absolutely do not get stuffed with more or any ads! Yes, they're there. But you honestly have to go out of your way to view or hear them. It's not like you turn on the xbox and there's an ad in your face before it's done loading. You have to physically move onto an ad Tab in the spotlight tab and sit and watch it. It's all on the user.

And the ads are NEVER the 1st box in the spotlight section.

God forbid Microsoft think that the owner of an xbox would be interested in other things xbox related.

I have no problems with billboards and such in-game, but having to watch a commercial which takes longer than the necessary loadtime is crap. And Burnout's price dropped pretty considerably, pretty quickly, which is a good trade-off for advertising, in my book.