A new, fullscreen advertisement for Modern Warfare 3’s impending Nov. 10 release has been appearing on Xbox consoles today, and gamers aren’t happy.
Once the pop-up appears, players can either buy the Vault Edition upgrade, buy the MW3 base version, or close the ad. This sudden ad appearance right on the home page has left the wider Xbox community baffled on Nov. 2, with many immediately demanding Microsoft “leave them to game in peace” instead of adding these changes.
The advertisement, which is soaked in red and has an operator as the key art, appears as soon as gamers turn on their Xbox consoles. Once it’s up, it envelops the screen and briefly gets in the way of your gaming experience.
Not only is the pop-up annoying but players are worried this could become a new normal on Xbox, especially because other games have already started this trend. Two games that tried it early were Starfield and Forza Motorsport, and players are convinced we’ll soon see smaller titles like Candy Crush and Peggle advertise like this too.
One main gripe was the fact gamers spent almost a grand on the console to begin with. The community believes there should be no reason to experience ads like this because they’d already spent “a fortune for a console.”
Others suggested they had been tossing up whether to purchase MW3 after a rocky beta testing period, which saw some players unable to load into games. There were also issues with visibility throughout each map in MW3, as players felt the contrast and lighting hit an all-time low.
On the heels of that insipid beta, this new advertisement “blunder” from Microsoft may have turned them away entirely, disgruntled fans admitted today.
Whether this impacts MW3’s sales noticeably—positively or negatively—remains to be seen until Activision releases sales figures.
