Visual Studio appearing in several Xbox 360 and PC games

Gamers amongst you might have already noticed it: there are Visual Studio ads appearing in several games. With the Defy All Challenges campaign, we're informing developers how the Visual Studio development environment helps them to defy their challenges while developing applications and websites. The campaign consists of several traditional components, including pretty cool advertisements in magazines and bannering on websites. One of the less obvious components is the advertising that is displayed in several Xbox 360 and PC games.

In order so see these advertisements, the computer or Xbox 360 of the player must be connected to the internet, the player must be identified as Belgian and have at least an Xbox 360 Live Silver Membership account (for the Xbox games).

Here are a few screen shots of some of the games, displaying the advertisement (in English and French):

And here is a picture I took, displaying the ad, while playing Need for Speed Carbon on Xbox 360. Since I'm no good photographer, the pictures are not really clear. But then again I suppose a regular CRT television screen is not the best object to take a picture of.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, MSDN, Visual Studio, Defy All Challenges, Massive, Digital Advertising Solutions, games, Xbox

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 30, 2007
  None of these adverts look "in-place", they suspend the element of disbelief. I've always been against in-game adverts in principle (you've already paid for the game, why put up with adverts?), but this just shows how bad it is in reality. And it's not as though many developers play these games (or that gamers are interested in software dev). Who'se descision was it to go ahead with this campaign? He needs a slapping.

• Anonymous
  May 30, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 30, 2007
  Freaky.Cool.

• Anonymous
  May 30, 2007
  ZippyV: the website is clearly not intended for a seasoned Visual Studio developer. You will not get any benefits from visiting Defy All Challenges over the regular MSDN. David: I guess you should slap me then, as I gave the GO for this campaign. Trust me that we didn't take the decision lightly. And from experience I can tell you that a screenshot can't capture the same "sentiment" you get while playing the game.

• Anonymous
  May 30, 2007
  David: I also pay for magazines, newspapers, tv subscriptions (cable), my physical mailbox - and they all get ads pushed into them. Not that I like that personally, but why would games be any different? You should give every marketeer on the planet a slapping then. Anyway, regardless of advertising politics, I just think it's way cool that it's possible :-) I didn't realize the Xbox platform and games could support this kind of stuff. Wow :-)

• Anonymous
  May 30, 2007
  http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=311601

• Anonymous
  May 30, 2007
  I'm quite pro-in game advertisements, seeing how they can make developers gain a little extra to put into future projects... I don't like these ones specifically though, they just don't seem to "blend in" with the in game environment. I think the main reason is that they are too bright, while real life advertisements never appear this bright... I'd say: darken the images a little and they'll fit in more nicely, but right now it's just not really working to my humble opinion...

• Anonymous
  May 30, 2007
  Tom, note that these screenshots were made to show us how the ads would fit in the game, so they are optimized for our (pre-)viewing experience. It's only the first one that appears really bright, the other ones are less bright...

• Anonymous
  May 30, 2007
  You're right about the sheer brightness, but I still think they're too white to fit into certain games, but well, that's just personal... It would help if there would be real life posters of this campaign too, then it would be a lot more convincing in game too.