Sony Introduces Ads to WipEout, Promptly Removes Them

Sony is announcing that all the in-game advertising added to WipEout HD will be removed as a majority of users have been reporting that they are increasing load times for the game. The ads were up for less than 24 hours before Sony made its decision and it's rare to see a videogame company respond to an issue related to one of its initiatives so quickly.

An official from Sony told Eurogamer that “The ad has been removed from WipEout HD and we are investigating the situation to ensure that any in-game advertising does not affect gameplay.” In other words, even if the initial implementation had its problems, Sony and its partner, Double Fusion, are still interested in closely integrating advertising in videogames and WipEout will get its ads as soon as load times are unaffected by the move.

WipEout HD is the first of a wider array of Sony-made videogames set to get “dynamic” in-game ads. Jonathan Epstein, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Double Fusion, is saying that the ads are the way his company and Sony are “responding to advertiser demand and offering an engaging ad format while pushing in-game ad innovation to a new level.”

With more and more people in the crucial advertising segment of 25 - 49 spending quite a lot of time playing videogames rather than reading newspapers, magazines and watching television, advertisers are looking for ways to target them.

The problem is that it's rather impossible to introduce advertising breaks in videogames so the ads need to be somehow integrated in the game world, which presents another issue when considering that an add for a real life product might look a bit out of place in games like Halo, Fallout 3 or Uncharted 2. This is why smaller arcade games, like WipEout, are being targeted by Double Fusion and Sony.