The filing points to a possible ad-supported model for PC and console games that is less disruptive than the approaches commonly used in mobile titles.

Watching an ad would earn players another block of ad-free play time, called a “credit”

    • Joe@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      81·
      14 days ago

      If Microsoft lets the patent sit idle and refuses to license it to others, it would be a very good thing for a few years. Let’s see what happens, though.

  • LillyPip@lemmy.caEnglish
    17·
    14 days ago

    Put ads in my games and I’ll stop playing your games. Simple as. Plenty of indies out there are more deserving of my time.

  • Zink@programming.devEnglish
    14·
    13 days ago

    Oh good. I was only 98% sure I was done buying consoles forever. It’s good to really know.

    I might make exceptions for consoles/devices that run linux off the shelf. (I want to get a steam frame, ok?)

    • AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zipEnglish
      4·
      13 days ago

      Just get an emulation handheld. With Steam offering ARM support through a translation layer, a strong one can even run a surprising array of PC games these days. My Retroid Pocket Flip 2 isn’t even that nice as far as these things go, and it plays just about any 2D game I’ve tried and a lot of 3D from the '00s and early '10s, later if they don’t press limits. You can also attach them to TVs and use normal controllers, including multiplayer.

    • w3dd1e@lemmy.zipEnglish
      3·
      13 days ago

      The patent seems to be for PC games though I’m sure it would apply to both.

  • kaitco@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    14 days ago

    Watching an ad would earn players another block of ad-free play time, called a “credit”

    As a millennial, I’ve watched the rise and fall of many things. Never thought I’d see the entire fall of gaming and so soon following its rise.

  • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    13 days ago

    I am assuming this means they are planning on adding a “free with ads” tier to Xbox Cloud Game Streaming. Which doesn’t really bother me that much if its a free tier. But if they add this to paid tiers or full games that would probably lose them a lot of goodwill that Asha seems to be pretty keen on regaining lately.

    • ganryuu@lemmy.caEnglish
      11·
      13 days ago

      As usual, it’s going to be only for the free, or “cheaper” tier at first, then it will creep up to the other tiers. We’ve seen this happen time and again.

  • Chrglstr143@lemmy.zipEnglish
    4·
    13 days ago

    That one black mirror episode where you had limited credits to skip ads and the forced you to keep your eyes open to watch the unskippable ad if you didn’t have the credits. Enough said.

    Seriously, what the hell are they thinking? Did they not come up with anything better? Oh well, now we definitely know we’re living in a dystopia at least.

  • LostWanderer@fedia.io
    3·
    14 days ago

    ROFL Oh hell no, that would get me to never buy a game with this feature enabled. I would wait and figure out if said feature were present.

    • med@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      14 days ago

      It’s your 30th boss run. As you fuck up your sixth dodge roll in a row, the Troll picks up your character. He roars over the screams of your avatar as he crushes it’s ribs in its massive fist.

      Then, as he raises you high over head, and opens wide to chomp down on your head, the actions stops. The Troll turns to the camera and smiles, showing off brilliant pearly whites. “Colgate is recommended by 9/10 dentists.”, the troll effuses over the screaming.

      A text box appears.

      ‘To proceed, type the number of dentists Colgate is recommended by, followed by this random number “N”.’

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
        1·
        13 days ago

        i think a popup will just show in the middle of the fight obscuring everything. “you have alloted 30minutes of boss battle, please watch ads to continue”

  • Fandangalo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    14 days ago

    Reminder: mobile games have had ad = benefit for over a decade. However, this sounds like the reverse (get a credit = no ads or ad free time).

    Roblox has had integrated ads for some time, typically diegetic ads on in game billboards. Some of these integrations go less noticed because of the parallel to the real world & they aren’t disruptive of gameplay flow.

    Microsoft is welcome to try this pattern, but it’ll likely require developers to be heavily incented to do so. Given that MS just downsized, meaning they have less first parties & have rightfully angered some pockets of the game development world, I feel like their only option here is lots of money or force the loop. Forcing this loop will damage the total addressable market, unless it’s used for F2P games.

    Long story, short: they may be patenting this, but they have a long, uphill battle to get this to work in any sort of paid, AAA game/product. They would need an amazing draw to pull people passed it, and a lot of their brands don’t have the draw they used to (see Halo Infinite).

  • bryndos@fedia.io
    2·
    14 days ago

    I’m sure this has been done before. stupid web clicker city builder or whatever that if you watch advert you et more in game credits. It might not be exactly the same but surely not novel enough to be patentable, prior art. Or in this case prior twat.

    • 4am@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      13 days ago

      USPTO changed its rules in 2013; prior art only counts if it was patented first. This is why Nintendo has been trying to patent stuff other companies are doing that is similar to their games (eg PalWorld).

      Part of me wishes Nintendo was doing this to lose on purpose so there is precedent to not use this against them in the future, but I’ve become far too pessimistic for a “good-guy Nintendo” arc…