Microsoft abuses advertising on Xbox and receives backlash

Microsoft is retesting displaying full-screen ads when you start your Xbox. A practice that is obviously not to the taste of many players.

Would you like to start advertising again on your Xbox console? No ? No way ? Microsoft seems determined to display full-screen advertisements for users of its console and this is absolutely not to the taste of gamers.

Microsoft persists in imposing advertisements on Xbox

Last November, Microsoft received backlash for displaying a full-screen ad for the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III. The kind of pop-up window that we associate with a free website and not with a console that costs several hundred euros.

Obviously, this did not prevent the firm from continuing to display this type of advertising: last week, many players saw a new pop-up window announcing the Developer_Direct event highlighting the work of its studios.

In recent months, advertisements for Starfield, Forza and even promotional offers have been advertised in this way to Xbox users, as reported by the user K__Med on X (Twitter).

The latter takes the analogy of Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, which can be purchased at a lower price than the advertising prices displayed at its launch. This “subsidized” model is not that of the Xbox console, many of whose users pay for a Game Pass subscription.

Pop-ups to make optional?

In reality, advertising on platforms like Steam, Epic Games or Battle.net is already legion. Pop-ups are displayed by default when launching these different launchersannouncing new releases and especially promotions on the catalog.

But these can be deactivated, these different platforms not hesitating to do their own advertising within the application itself. Some are therefore asking that such an option be possible on Xbox, especially since the excellent Developer_Direct conference was also highlighted within the Xbox interface itself.