One of mobile gaming's least popular monetization efforts may be coming to console gaming, according to a new report about a platform named playerWON. A company named Simulmedia is reportedly already forming partnerships for playerWON with major gaming publishers including Electronic Arts and Hi-Rez Studios to offer in-game advertisements. Not just any advertisements, either, but rather watch-to-earn commercials that can be used for content unlocks and other in-game rewards. playerWON's appeal, compared to mobile advertising, is said to be a more impressive caliber of advertising relationships.

The idea is simple. Certain mobile games, including both free-to-play and premium experiences, allow players to watch a commercial to earn a specific in-game reward. That's often a time-gated currency, but can be other rewards. Many games allow people to watch commercials this way several times, if not endlessly. It's a simple way to get someone to sit and watch commercials, only gamified.

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playerWON's platform alleges that it can do something similar for console games. Simulmedia even claims that its research shows players in games that implement playerWON will watch up to 10 advertisements a day to earn in-game rewards. Simulmedia pitches that this kind of in-game advertising is the best way to monetize players that otherwise don't spend money, including as much as 90% of the population of free-to-play games. Suffice to say, Simulmedia is pitching playerWON as the best way to do so.

The way it works is that developers like EA or Hi-Rez would be able to program playerWON's advertising directly into their games, as they see fit. This allows the developer to decide when to offer an advertisement to a player, whether it's a 15 or 30-second ad, what rewards to grant, and what kind of limitations to place around the system. playerWON simply provides the advertising when a game requests it.

To be clear, just because Electronic Arts and Hi-Rez have apparently entered a partnership with Simulmedia doesn't mean that it's implementing advertising into its games. It could be an experiment or test, or plans could change over time. That said, clearly the possibility of inserting advertising into console games is under consideration.

Historically, inserting any advertising into video games has led to controversy. That includes both premium and free-to-play games, to an extent. Then again, games are introducing advertisements in ways that players seem very comfortable with, even if they're seen as cross-promotion like in Fortnite. Adding commercials into a console game seems like a threshold that many gamers may not be comfortable with, but also a very profitable decision if gamers do end up okay with it. Only time with tell, but this likely isn't the last time gamers will hear about playerWON.

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Source: Axios