Microsoft is planning to bring ads on their free to play XBOX games platform by working with some adtech companies. The reason behind this bold move is not the ad revenue as Microsoft suggested that this would help developers and also help make the platform more appealing to the advertisers.
Gamers user experience has been taken into consideration as the ads will be shown in the form of digitally rendered billboards that too by the end of the car racing game, the insider reports.
Currently there is not much information whether Microsoft would bring the in-game ad units such as skin avatars and video ads.
“We are always looking for ways to improve the experience for players and developers but we don’t have anything further to share,” the company said, according to the report.
Microsoft was contemplating on the idea since last 3 years however with the launch of latest models such as XBOX Series S and Series X and the in demand of free to play games brought the said change.
Microsoft has as of late added approx 17 new games, including Halo Infinite and The Matrix Awakens, to its allowed to-play Xbox games.
Micropsoft has made it clear that the launch of this new model is to help their engineers have an income stream and the decision to n take a cut is help them motivate into making more free to play games.
Recently Microsoft acquired the adtech companies such as Xandr and Activision Blizzard. This would help them churn out a certain plan to improve their ad inventory and also make sure that ad agencies are happy showing ads on the XBOX platform.
Microsoft also has given assurance that it wont let advertisers use the data that it collects from their search engine Bing and also the data about behaviour on its websites and software to target Xbox gamers.
The cost of Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold enrollment has been dropped as of late. With a cut-down in costs and arrangement of ads on free to play , Microsoft needs to persuade more players to be paying clients.
