Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Is Ad-Sponsored Gaming Here To Stay?

Admittedly I'm not a huge gamer, yeah I know how can I be a geek and not be into gaming? Don't get me wrong I enjoy gaming but I don't enjoy the price tag that comes with trying to build a great gaming rig, or having to shell out tons of cash to purchase the latest games. So for me the new trend of ad-supported gaming is perfect and I personally hope the trend continues.

Last year Ubisoft became one of the first publishers to offer its games for free including Far Cry, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Rayman Raving Rabbids and Ghost Recon.

The trend has continued to build momentum with more and more publishers releasing some of their older games, along with a few newer ones, as freebies with in game ads. Just last week a few new ad-sponsored games appeared online including; Full Spectrum Warrior, Area 51, The Suffering and Beyond Good & Evil.

According to Massive Inc., developers of the advertising network embedded in many games bought today, the system of in game ads does actually does work. In a test conducted by Nielson entertainment, the average purchase considerations - based on ad campaigns that ran on the Massive network - increased by 41 percent. Additionally, the average ad recall increased by 41 percent whereas average brand familiarity increased by 64 percent. The study included over 600 gamers playing Need for Speed: Carbon on the Xbox 360 and PC.

So it would seem as though this is a win win situation for publishers. The advertising is working and more people like myself are willing to try out new games, thus furthering their reach. This being the case we might actually see more free ad-supported games down the road.

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