Virtually any support is likely to be used as an advertising site, and Microsoft is in those, as can be deduced from one of the latest patents registered by Redmond. You can see the patent whose title is “Offer personalized content for a non-disruptive online gaming experience” I’ll reproduce his summary in this link below, and after that we’ll spend a few minutes thinking about what might come next.

«One method of providing content to a user while playing a game involves detecting that the user is interacting with a game provided by an online streaming provider and identifying a time frame in the game during which the user’s interaction with the game is believed to be under interaction. threshold. The method includes identifying a location in the game environment to overlay the content during a time period and identifying the content to display to the user. Content will be displayed via an overlay video stream separate from the game stream. In real-time playing the user’s game, an overlay video stream is sent to be displayed to the user simultaneously with the game stream to provide the user with content at the identified location for at least part of the time frame.»

Okay, so the first thing is to clarify what Microsoft’s patent is referring to when it talks about “content” and “personalized content”. And you don’t need to be particularly smart to understand that when we’re talking about a non-intrusive experience at the same time, we’re talking about placing an ad in the gaming experience, which can be very simple. in some cases, but also terribly complicated in others.

For example, when we imagine driving, billboards on the side of the road seem like perfect placement, and it doesn’t really detract from the game experience. And also if we are talking about a sports simulator, we are more than used to seeing advertising elements in them, be it on the billboards of the football field, on the car, on the helmet or on the overalls of the Formula 1 competitor or on the jersey of a particularly popular skater.

It is different when, for example, we ask ourselves how this could be done in games like The Witcher, Horizon Forbidden West or Elden Ring. This reminds me of a movie that went unnoticed at the time, State and Main, by David Mamet, but which already anticipated this problem in 2000 by trying to place a website ad into the movie set. which takes place at the end of the 19th century. How they do it, I won’t tell you at the end if you haven’t seen it and this comment piqued your curiosity, and I can tell you in advance that the movie is hilarious.

Be that as it may, the first thing that comes to my mind is that Microsoft would be thinking about how to improve its revenue, both from the games produced by its studios, and especially from their use by Xbox Game Pass subscribers. Now, Phil Spencer has already predicted price increases in games and possibly subscriptions next year, so it seems a bit far-fetched that they’re considering taking both measures in the same year, jeopardizing Game Pass’ current level of success. .

But interest in this is growing if we combine it with other recent reports of a Microsoft survey in which they asked Xbox Game Pass users what they would think about the arrival of a new subscription level. And so it is that it is enough to follow market trends to suggest as a plausible hypothesis that Microsoft is considering a cheaper version of the Xbox Game Pass subscription that includes advertising.

This way, Microsoft could add many more users and improve the monetization of their accounts by adding the amount of the monthly fee to the revenue generated by the insertion of ads, which fits better with Microsoft’s plans to keep Xbox Game Pass growing. of users, and thus in monetization.

What do you think? Do you think Microsoft intends to put advertising in all games and for all players, is it considering a cheaper ad-supported Xbox Game Pass subscription, or do Redmond’s plans go both ways?