Silverlight to deliver “organic” advertisements

Rock Band players enjoy Coke(tm)! See the Coke(tm) side of life!

So in a forthcoming update for Xbox Live, users will be downloading Silverlight capability for their Live interactions. Sounds good? Think again. Apparently the primary reasoning behind delivering Microsoft’s Flash counterpart to your system will be to introduce advertising to your dashboard.

That’s right, get ready for EVEN MORE advertisement to infiltrate your system!

Apparently not only is it good enough for ads for Xmen Origins: Wolverine to be smeared all over your copy of Guitar Hero 3 for no apparent reason, you’ll now also be serviced with ads by just switching the damn machine on.

Prepare for a PlayStation fanboy rush, Xbox users. Start populating those Terran bunkers.

Either way, after a few days of speculation around different sites, our foremost public face of Live, Major Nelson, has spoken out about the issue.

One of our core principles is to enhance, not interfere with the gaming experience, and we work directly with our partners to only deliver experiences that are relevant to the LIVE community. Silverlight will help make those ads a more organic part of the dashboard, like we’ve done with some of the NXE slots in the past. No one on the team wants to turn the dashboard into something that looks like like Shibuya Crossing.

-Major Nelson tries to set some minds at ease

A lot of users are understandably annoyed, especially those who pay their monthly rates for Live Gold. The very odd juxtaposition of both paying for a service and being loaded up with marketing at the same time sits uneasily in the stomach. I wouldn’t be surprised if we begin hearing more about this around the internet, but for the time being it looks as if it’s inevitable.