disappeared
Banned
I haven't had my 360 connected to the internet in almost two years. No complaints here.
Penny Arcade: the ugly, profitable details about Xbox Live dashboard ads
- Thread starter Sean
- Start date
Turned on my Xbox just to look. Here is what is on the home page:
1) Disc Tray
2) Quickplay
3) Large-size Rotation of Comic-Con Coverage, Movie on Crackle App, CoD Black Ops Trailer, Quantum Conundrum, and Hulu Plus
4) Link to MLB Apps and MLB related games, movies and avatar items
5) XBLA Sale
6) Kinect
7) Zune Movie Marketplace (labeled 'Advertisement')
At the least I think Kuchera is overstating his case for paid ads overtaking the dashboard. At the worst he is sensationalizing/distorting facts in some anti-ad crusade.
MY main point would be that while I know most people here would like to see everything game-content-focused, pushing the many entertainment options on the platform to the front does not equal flooding you with ads.
There is no more than one non-Xbox related ad tile per tab and more than one tab has no such tile. People need to get a grip and Kuchera needs to write a fairer article.
1) Disc Tray
2) Quickplay
3) Large-size Rotation of Comic-Con Coverage, Movie on Crackle App, CoD Black Ops Trailer, Quantum Conundrum, and Hulu Plus
4) Link to MLB Apps and MLB related games, movies and avatar items
5) XBLA Sale
6) Kinect
7) Zune Movie Marketplace (labeled 'Advertisement')
At the least I think Kuchera is overstating his case for paid ads overtaking the dashboard. At the worst he is sensationalizing/distorting facts in some anti-ad crusade.
MY main point would be that while I know most people here would like to see everything game-content-focused, pushing the many entertainment options on the platform to the front does not equal flooding you with ads.
There is no more than one non-Xbox related ad tile per tab and more than one tab has no such tile. People need to get a grip and Kuchera needs to write a fairer article.
How do you get game updates? Download arcade games? Demos?
Uno Venova
Banned
There really is no middle ground, it's either what MS does, or a charity.
Dude. Twice? Contribute something new or stop posting.
I think the best thing about GAF is that I can find out about games more unbiasly (relatively guys relatively) than say, looking at... oh I don't know... IGN? GameSpot? <Insert other major gaming site>? Then I can make more informed decisions about game purchases. I'm pretty sure OP in game threads are not paid by developers to make the OP nice and informative and pretty and organized.
Unless GAF starts to sticky game topics, with highlighted colours and banner images in the thread titles.
But GAF wouldn't do that, right?
Ooh, I should just take it huh? I guess that would apply to everything else a part of human nature and history.
Frankly, it's probably largely Japanese corporate paralysis in the vein of "We will thoroughly investigate our gas pedals and eat months of bad press even though the government eventually determines that people ancient enough to not drive are stomping the brake and missing".
Not that Sony exactly covered themselves with glory there, but it's pretty telling of the disconnect between effects and e-rage when Sony yanks a service down because hackers may know your email address vs. MS blames EA for having the access MS granted them when the not-actually-FIFA hack comes along.
You are bending the facts to fit your argument. If every tile were a link to a game for sale you wouldn't consider those ads.
The truth is 90% of the dashboard tiles link to Xbox games and/or services, not traditional paid advertising.
CrunchinJelly
formerly cjelly
I just went to Amazon.com. It's full of ads. They keep trying to sell me stuff.
Uh, I literally have pop ups from Steam when I start games
What delusional world are people living in that think the only place they see ads is on Xbox? You should be freaking out about search engines, web forums, news websites, YouTube, basically everything that people like to use.
Why would I not consider it ads? It's advertising something.
Game ads are less obtrusive because they're actually relevant, but that doesn't make them not ads. It just brings it from being a shit UI packed with irrelevant crap to a shit UI where everything has a place, just like the XMB with dedicated Axe and Calico Jack tabs would be a good UI packed with irrelevant crap.
Alex
Member
You can turn the pop ups on Steam off.
I can't put into words how perfectly you made the point.
I'm paying for their premium service too. <sob>
There's a difference between a storefront and a home screen. The home screen should give quick access to the content you already own. If you're looking in the store tab, then it is perfectly acceptable to show recently added games.
Irrelevant to you, but there are a few other people with Xboxes out there and they may want to know what movies have been released today as opposed to what murder simulator is available this week.
Having ads on the dashboard and having to pay to play online (when every other console, PC, Phone and Tablet does not) makes the 360 a huge POS and have driven me away from it.
I do not need the love of a company to make myself feel worthwhile, thus I will not defend things that make both my own and others experience worse!
I do not need the love of a company to make myself feel worthwhile, thus I will not defend things that make both my own and others experience worse!
I am pretty sure the team has gotten that message loud and clear from this Penny Arcade article, keep your fingers crossed that something changes to adapt to what people expect out of a paid service.
Maybe those people don't understand why the price for Gold hasn't changed, yet the number of ads per dashboard update increase. The more ads in a magazine the more pages of editorial I get. But the ads on Xbox are making it worse, not better.
I guess I find it odd that people can hate ads that don't effect there lives in some way. Like bus ads. If the bus stopped every 10 minutes to show bystanders the ad, I would understand the hate of putting ads on the bus. If the bus runs the same either way who gives a shit.
MaverickHunterX
Member
Doesn't always work though. For example, you cant find the dotw page that way. The last time I tried navigating though the new experience, was when SNK had that 50% off sale on their XBLA games. I could NOT find that shit for the life of me. Fucking crazy. This is one of the reasons that I try to do more on my PS3s these days...
The one that blew my mind was the ad for diablo 3 on the main Xbox page. They were advertising a game that WASN'T even coming to that system! What fucking balls, man.
Jesus fucking christ you're a moron. There's two things wrong with the Xbox UI, it's a shit UI now no matter what the ads and it's got poorly-targeted ads no matter what the interface. You can't simultaneously justify the shit NXE UI because some of its ads are well-targeted and the pointless ads because some of them showed up back on the decent-to-good blades, 50% of the experience fucking one thing up the other and 50% fucking up a different thing makes 100% fucked up experience rather than 0% total fuckup.
disappeared
Banned
My 360's basically just a Skyrim player at this point. Still running the original version lol.
I main on the PS3 now.
The ticker is dependent on the clock to determine what content to display. Go into your date and time settings. Turn off the set automatically function and then manually set the date to a future one. Restart the system.
It should restart ticker free.
It's the only way I know of to disable the news ticker. Personally it doesn't bother me since it's a just a streaming set of texts and is absolutely unobtrusive, but if it bothers someone that much it's fairly easily disabled, albeit in a very strange way.
It's sad to go to name calling after two posts of reasoned discussion.
Also you must be addressing someone else because I have not argued any point about the quality of the experience nor do I really like the Metro dashboard configuration. NXE (V1 and/or 2) was my favorite design thus far.
Uno Venova
Banned
Really? Amazon is an online store, if you went into the XBL store and saw so many ads no one would complain.
I'm surprised people try to argue space spent trying to persuade you to buy something aren't ads.
We can base the discussion on the conceit that any tile in which they are selling to you is ad space but I really don't know what people expect from a business like Microsoft.
Your option to avoid ads is to unplug your console. If you think a paid service shouldn't have so many ads you can scream into the vastness of space all day but until you cancel your cable subscription you're out of luck.
Well I guess you can go into the options and select boot to disc. PROBLEM SOLVED
OldJadedGamer
Banned
Wow, tell us how you really feel. Not good form to use personal attacks btw.
So you have to break a function of the system in order to disable the advertising ticker on the XMB? Poster I quited made it seem that all it was was a check box in the settings. I didn't know you had to take advantage of a bug in the OS. Sony doesn't want you to disable the ads on the XMB and if they did, it would be an option to turn it off.
Uno Venova
Banned
They expect them to be a little less intrusive with their ads.
What are we screaming about?
ahahaha
amazon, the site whose main purpose is to sell you things, and which is free to use for that purpose? you're comparing that to xbl whose main purpose is to play online, which charges you for it?
good god I know you guys are loyal to this corporation, but get some perspective already
Crazy thing is, despite all the ads, I still much prefer the XBL experience over PSN. Everything is so much smoother from chat options to viewing achievements. I can understand people when they use their mic unlike on PS3 which has the worst mic sound quality of all time coupled with the horrible over abundant use of $10 bluetooth headsets.
Are the ads a problem? Sure. They're all over the place. Do they really truely hurt my experience on XBL? Not really. I still launch my games, browse my game library, and buy DLC with ease. All of which I believe is handled better on 360.
Microsoft gets constantly assaulted on GAF in favor of Sony, and people who enjoy their Xbox seem to get flamed all the time for it. If Microsoft makes money that's a good thing for me. It means their product will get more support and deliver more content that I want. Sony has a great thing going for a free service, but the $26 I spend annually for Xbox LIVE I believe is worth it for the benefits. I'm much more comfortable using it.
Are the ads a problem? Sure. They're all over the place. Do they really truely hurt my experience on XBL? Not really. I still launch my games, browse my game library, and buy DLC with ease. All of which I believe is handled better on 360.
Microsoft gets constantly assaulted on GAF in favor of Sony, and people who enjoy their Xbox seem to get flamed all the time for it. If Microsoft makes money that's a good thing for me. It means their product will get more support and deliver more content that I want. Sony has a great thing going for a free service, but the $26 I spend annually for Xbox LIVE I believe is worth it for the benefits. I'm much more comfortable using it.
88% for ads, i don't know, there is a lot of grey area that people are forgetting to take into account. What are the resolution of the ads anyway because that would be how Microsoft is determining the size of this.
The prices seem really high for any xbla game, that's is my big takeaway from those numbers, which is really unfortunate.
The prices seem really high for any xbla game, that's is my big takeaway from those numbers, which is really unfortunate.
BruiserBear
Banned
I agree with lots of things you're saying, but there is no need to cheerlead for the ads, which is exactly what you're doing.
Also, it always amusing how the cost of Live becomes so cheap for the defenders of ads. I've gotten some nice deals on Live for a year. $40, $35, and maybe even $30 one time, but $26? Come on son.
I didn't say YOU ARE SCREAMING. I said, you could scream. It's different.
The level of intrusiveness is a matter of opinion obviously. The ads don't really make it hard for me to press A and start my disc.
As far as digital titles even XMB makes me scroll through a list of my hundred game titles that are only sortable in a couple ways.
Actually, $24.90 to be exact. ExpertZone.
http://expertzone.microsoft.com/Rewards/default.aspx?rewardCategoryId=1006
Uno Venova
Banned
At least you are scrolling through your own content and not the content they are telling you to buy when you boot up the console.
And you can sort them in many ways, I have some sorted by demos, the welcome back giveaways and 60 minute trials, they let you name the album anything.
For the discussion's sake we are talking about 88% of what MS determines is usable space. I think most people can agree that Metro doesn't make the best use of your 50+" screen.
I'd be willing to bet if they used more of that space it'd still be near 88% ads and probably look even worse.
Yea it's really irrelevant too. Who cares if you got some free codes and your xbl is free or whatever, it doesn't matter in a discussion about the overall value of the service and should be thought of by its MSRP which is $59.99.
EatinOlives
Member
It boggles me even more when people actually DEFEND it. You pay for it and you don't care, fine, that's all right. But to go out of your way and defend it is completely ridiculous.
XBL is a complete waste of money. Too bad some people are shackled to it so hard that either they can't bail out due to their friend list/entire game library being on the 360 or they simply want to justify it externally to make themselves feel better internally.
FrostuTheNinja
Member
I've been able to game my XBL subscription by signing up for their "x months for $x" offers quite a few times. If in not mistaken, I've paid under $15 for the past year of service. The trick is, you have to call to cancel the day before your sub ends. Then in a couple of days to couple of weeks there will be another one of those, "x for x months" deals. Hell, last month I cancelled and the following day there was a 2 month sub for $2.
I never knew about creating game albums and I'm having some trouble figuring it out right now. Can you help me out?
Eh, I won't necessarily agree that it SHOULD cost money. However, I'd much much rather use Live than PSN for pretty much any reason. It sucks I have to pay for it, but I will continue to do so until PSN stops being inferior in everything I care about.
Uno Venova
Banned
Go to any game, triangle, then information, and there you should see the album name you can edit to what you want.
This is a message board. People are going out of their way to defend it about as much as you are to condemn it.
One might argue that PSN could have updated their interface once or twice in almost 7 years. And I've gotten what I've paid for with that.
And you can't argue that it's a complete waste of money at the same time that you say it's fine if people want to pay for it. There must be a fancy English phrase for that. Maybe just a contradiction.
edit: It occurs to me you may be referring to defending the dash which would be different than defending XBL. Sorry if that's the case.