PlayStation 3 introduces 'in game' advertising

Owners of PlayStation 3 consoles will soon see adverts inside video gamesafter Sony struck a deal with IGA Worldwide, a company that specialises in'in-game' advertising.
The adverts, which can take the form of anything from a bottle of soft drink avirtual character consumes to a large billboard inside a sports stadium, areupdated by the PS3's internet connection.
The deal will bring give rise to the first in-game adverts seen by owners ofPS3s, and should provide a filip to the fledgling video game advertisingindustry, which experts say could grow to be worth $1 billion by 2011.
Electronic Arts (EA), one of the largest video games publishers, will be thefirst company to incorporate adverts into its PS3 titles under the deal,financial details of which haven't been disclosed. Among the first games todisplay advertising will be Madden NFL football, NBA Livebasketball, and the racing franchises Need for Speed and Burnout.

And that's the real problem. FSC may be able to promote itsGraphicBooster to buyers of the one laptop it's going to produce, fornow, with an XGP connector, but unless it and other vendors adopt thetechnology en masse, it's hard to see XGP becoming anything more than an accessory for a handful of notebooks.
It'll be like all those docking connectors: not proprietary, true, but so rarely used it might as well be.
Much will depend on the extent to which AMD pushes XGP as part ofits 'Puma' notebook platform, and engages with bodies like the PCI SIGto turn XGP into a true standard. At that point, we might see all thoseIntel-based laptops taking on the technology

Advertisers have long sought ways to target the young, mostly male audiencewhich spends an increasing amount of time playing video games - often at theexpense of traditional media such as TV. Publishers, meanwhile, have beenexploring new, web-based business models.
In January, for instance, EA announced that it would distribute a slimmed downversion of Battlefield, the popular combat game, free via theinternet, and aim to make money through in-game ads, as well as the sales ofweapons and other virtual items that can be used in the game.
IGA Worldwide says it serves "hundreds of millions of ad impressions"each week to more than ten million people who play online games.
One problem faced by in-game advertising, analysts say, is that adverts cannotalways be configured to run across different consoles, even if they aredesigned for the same game, making it difficult for brand owners to plancampaigns.