When a big new first-party game comes to Xbox, Microsoft is known to put up big, annoying takeover ads, and that trend continues this year with the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. Things are a little different, and more annoying, this year.
People who booted up their Xbox today, the day of MW4's release, noticed that not only is there a big MW4 takeover ad, but the ad even hijacks your custom background.
It is possible to toggle this off, thankfully, as people online quickly discovered. Players can head to Settings > General > Personalization > My Background, then uncheck "Show event-themed backgrounds."
People were not happy about this, and particularly how the takeover this time totally removes the custom background you might have had to force you to see a giant ad for a game you might not even be interested in.
Ads on Xbox are only going to become more widespread from here. Right now, people on Xbox can test a free, ad-supported version of Xbox Cloud Gaming, and a lot of people think that's very gross.
Xbox's new chief strategy officer, Matthew Ball, is a big believer in cramming more ads into gaming to help with the "two-sided problem" of modern gaming.
Development costs for many games are now “way too high,” and consumers do not want to pay more, Ball said. Something has got to give, and one possible solution, as Ball sees it, is through advertising.
It's not just Xbox that wants to put more ads in front of you while gaming, as Electronic Arts has debuted a new platform called EA Advertising, through which the company plans to insert ads "directly into gameplay."
As for MW4, it's getting good review scores, boasting an 84 on GameSpot sister site Metacritic currently. For more, check out GameSpot's MW4 review above, covering the game's campaign, DMZ, and multiplayer modes. You can also read our written MW4 review.