Gamers Upset with Silverlight Advertisements on Xbox 360

Gamers are upset with the recent announcement about Silverlight advertisements heading to the Xbox 360. Similar to Adobe Flash, Silverlight is an Internet plugin developed by Microsoft. You can run advance animations, graphics, audio and video with the program installed on your computer. After being relatively successful with the plugin on PCs, Microsoft is now incorporating Silverlight on the Xbox 360. The main purpose is to enhance advertisements for the Dashboard of the Xbox 360.

This did not sit well with Xbox 360 gamers, especially those you are paying for the Xbox Live Gold account. In order to play online games on the Xbox 360 and have access to numerous features, gamers have to pay a monthly fee. While millions are happy to do so, they aren't happy with the advertisements, especially now that is being enhanced with Silverlight.

They questioned why advertisements would appear on their dashboards when they are already paying a premium price of $49.99 a year to access the service. Even Xbox 360 Silver (which is free) members aren't too happy since the advertisements don't benefit them either as the membership is still barren with features including online play. Microsoft just seems extremely greedy in this situation.

It also doesn't help that the Dashboard on the Xbox 360 is already covered with advertisements. If your console is connected to the Internet, it will overflow with numerous promotions. To further compound the problem, the Dashboard for the Xbox 360 is already too cluttered with advertisements. You will have a hard time finding what you want often as you have to shift through the numerous advertisements. Instead of streamlining the experience, Microsoft decided to enhance the much scrutinized advertisements with Silverlight.

The Xbox 360 Dashboard also suffers from excruciating long load times. Navigation would have been a lot faster if Microsoft simply got rid of the advertisement that steals important bandwidth. While they are working to improve the speed of the Dashboard, the Silverlight announcement puts a lot of uncertainly into the situation. Most of the concerns stem from whether or not Silverlight lead to more streamlined loading or end up slowing the Dashboard down even more.

Finally, the recent announcement also opens the door for in-game advertisements. While Microsoft promises that Silverlight won't intrude on the gaming experience, the possibility is still there for it to happen. No gamer wants their game to unintentionally pause in order for a video advertisement to load.

It also doesn't help Microsoft's image that Sony has completely free online gameplay with no advertisements on the Playstation 3. All the negativity won't stop them, however, from bringing Silverlight advertisements to the Xbox 360.