EA has tried this before, with predictable results. In 2020, EA Sports UFC 4 included full-screen ads for the Amazon Prime series The Boys that would appear during ‘Replay’ moments. These were absent from the game when it launched, with EA introducing the ads about a month later, thereby preventing them from being highlighted in reviews. It wasn’t long before the backlash led to EA disabling the ads.
I don’t mind ads on ingame billboards like how old Need For Speed games had like, Old Spice or Gillette or Cingular Wireless ads as a static texture on a billboard in the game world. Or some of the buildings in the game had branding on them like a Best Buy building. As long as it fits into the world setting I don’t consider those intrusive or obstructive to the experience. For example, I would expect there to be none of those kinds of ads in a game like Skyrim since it is a fantasy setting and those kinds of settings never have ads for anything other than market booth signs on the market tent or something.
However, those are the only kind of ad I am okay with. Fullscreen popups and big boxes that take up space eon menu screens is a huge problem.
I predict EA will not return to the former style I mentioned and will likely only attempt the latter again with disastrous results.
I recently bought the Prototype games cause they were on sale and I wanted to replay them for funsies.
The first game came out in like 2009 and there are billboards around the city for GameStop, Jersey Boys, I saw one that was just DC’s old 2000s logo. I think there were one or two other billboards in-game with real companies on them, the rest were made up.
I thought it was interesting to see because you don’t see it in games anymore unless you mod it.
I remember playing Midnight Club 3 when I was a kid and learning about KidRobot from their in world billboards. It fits really well in a racing game.