"In these interactive gameplay environments, brands become part of the game itself.""In these interactive gameplay environments, brands become part of the game itself."

In an announcement that is sure to unsettle players but please investors, Electronic Arts has announced a new program to bring in-game ads to its games in ways that EA claims won’t “disrupt” the player experience.

EA Advertising, as it’s called, is a new platform that EA says advertisers can use to reach EA’s network of 120 million monthly players. That’s indeed a massive scale, and some people in the video game industry have been surprised that this kind of program hasn’t happened sooner given how much money there is to potentially be made. Recently, Xbox’s chief strategy officer Matthew Ball talked about advertising in gaming, while a former BioWare boss said product placement could help improve the viability and sustainability of gaming. Not everyone agrees, of course, as there has been significant player pushback to the idea of in-game ads, and one top executive, Strauss Zelnick of Take-Two, has said in-game ads for full-price games are not fair to the consumer.

...

Experts tend to agree that the AAA video game business is unhealthy and unsustainable, due in part to rising development costs and prices for new releases generally staying the same. Ball and others have said advertising could be a way to help companies make more money to avoid raising prices. However, there is no reason to believe companies like EA and others would not launching in-game ads while also raising prices to $80 or more, along with a further acceleration of things like DLC, battle passes, and microtransactions.

I'm kinda glad that I stopped playing most mainstream AAA games ages ago, especially the big franchises like sports games and Call of Duty. If I had to pay >$60 for a game, and then got bombarded by ads after, it would just ruin the experience no matter how good the gameplay is.