Last week, Microsoft filed for an interesting U.S. trademark for ‘NUADS’, describing it as:
Advertising services, namely, promoting and marketing the goods and services of others through online interactive video games by enabling consumers to interact with third-party advertising content through voice or body gestures via computer game console and sensor devices.
Sounds like a new interactive advertising platform for Xbox Kinect indeed, as eagle-eyed tech blogger Manan Kakkar opined before the weekend.
A trademark application does not a product make, but it sure seems like Microsoft is plotting the introduction of a platform that will enable advertisers to run in-game ads that Xbox Kinect users can engage with through body motion and voice commands.
More opportunities for people to look like idiots in front of their TV screens!
But seriously, is Microsoft planning the next generation of intrusive ads? Or is this the inevitable future of advertising that they’re smartly preparing for? We’ll find out soon.
Microsoft will be introducing interactive ads in Kinect. Going to be called NUAds. Gestures and all in games.—
Manan Kakkar (@manan) June 10, 2011
Kinect for Xbox 360, or simply Kinect (originally known by the code name Project Natal),[7] is a “controller-free gaming and entertainment experience” by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 video game platform, and may later be supported by PCs via Windows 8. Based around a webcam-style add-on peripheral for the Xbox 360 console, it enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 without the need to touch a game controller, through a natural user interface using gestures and...
Microsoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, is a veteran software company, best known for its Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. Starting in 1980 Microsoft formed a partnership with IBM allowing Microsoft to sell its software package with the computers IBM manufactured. Microsoft is widely used by professionals worldwide and largely dominates the American corporate market. Additionally, the company has ventured into hardware with consumer products such as the Zune and...
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