Hrm, thought we'd seen the last of this topic. Seems a British TV commercial for PC World has been taken off the air by the Advertising Standards Authority. Why? It contained "misleading" information about the PS3, claiming the PAL 60GB unit "plays your PS2 games as well", even though it, well, does not. It plays most of them, yes, but not all. I'm sure they meant to say "plays most of your PS2 games as well", but hey, maybe they were paying by the word.

"Misleading" PC World PS3 Ad Pulled [Next-Gen]

This is the first (and I hope the last) senseless advertisement to try and ride the coattails of Grand Theft Auto IV's tremendous success to get people to buy things totally unrelated.

Target knows, the ad says, that you're spending all of your time playing GTA, but don't forget Mother's Day. That's right: GTA and Mother's Day in the same sentence. Classy.

All those billboards in City of Heroes are about to get much more familiar looking. NCsoft and Double Fusion have teamed up to start placing real world ads on their in-game billboards, the companies announced today. The good news is that the in-game advertising will be entirely opt-in, meaning that if gamers don't like it or want it they can just turn it off and it won't effect them one bit.

"City of Heroes is a key property for NCsoft and we take great care to grow and nurture our player community," said Brian Clayton, General Manager of NCsoft's Northern California studio. "We are pleased to work with Double Fusion on City of Heroes, as they have demonstrated sensitivity to the needs of our community and fundamentally understand how advertising can bring value to the players when executed gracefully, and in the appropriate context. In addition to allowing any of our players to opt-out if they so choose, their flexible technology will not only allow us to bring brand messages into the game but also provide a fun, new platform for displaying player-created materials."

NCsoft and Double Fusion make the common argument that the real world ads will add a level of realism to the game, but by allowing players to decide on their own whether that's really true they seem to be putting their money where their mouth is. NCsoft added that they will "dedicate all advertising dollars it earns to fund further game development for the online title."

I'm still not a fan of in-game advertising, but leaving the control in the hands of the players is a HUGE step forward. Dumping their earnings into further development is also a big plus.

The ads will go live sometime this summer, according to NCsoft NorCal GM Brian Clayton and the billboards can also be used to display player created content like, say, a picture of the top character in the game, which is kinda cool.

Bringing Optional In-Game Ads to Paragon City and the Rogue Isles [City of Heroes]

People in New Zealand have obviously forgotten their video game heritage. It's gotten so bad that advertising firm Republic was commissioned to create a series of advertisements aimed at reminding the nation of movie extras exactly where their current sports console games came from. I think this is a good start, but we need more. What we need - and what I would provide had I the time - is Saint George and the Dragon, only with the classic Adventure duck-dragon in place of the ferocious beast. Ah, for the good old days, when I could spend lazy hours photoshopping the Trix rabbit into "The Last Supper."

Kiwi Atari Reminder Campaign [bits bytes pixels & sprites]

Nickelodeon plans to develop 600 games in the next few years. Most of the titles, it sounds like, will be web-based games, with nearly a third popping up on Nick.com alone, Yahoo reports.

The games are part of a $100 million investment by MTV Networks. MTV plans to spend $500 million on creating games for its websites through 2009 as well.

The whole thing is tied to the advertising packed into sites like MTV, Nick and Nick Jr. according to the article. Other games will allow player to try before they buy or include micro-transactions to make money.

Nickelodeon's Game Plan: 600 Casual Games Being Developed; 185 Games Planned For Nick.com Alone [Yahoo]

Found at the corner of Spring and Canal in Manhattan today by reader Savage6000. Looks like the GTA hype-machine has gone into overdrive. Let's hope the game lives up to the building-sized ads and viral marketing campaigns.

Rockstar Games has begun the "viral" portion of its Grand Theft Auto IV marketing campaign, posting convincing wanted posters on Brooklyn-area telephone poles featuring Niko Bellic, the game's protagonist. The poster warns that Bellic is "wanted for questioning in connection with a shooting at a nightclub in the Hove Beach area of Broker" explaining that the perpetrator is of eastern European descent "which narrows it down to about 95% of the Hove Beach community." The poster jokes "Even we can't arrest that many foreigners" and suggests that Bellic be shot on sight.

The GTA IV poster also features an e-mail address and web site for the Liberty City Police Department. While the site isn't currently up, the e-mail auto responder is. The response is after the jump.