Xbox Live Ads Invading a Console Near You

Microsoft’s New Xbox Experience dashboard was fairly commercialized from the get-go — many of its windows are geared towards selling you something rather than delivering your console’s content — so it was only a matter of time before actual ads came to the platform. It appears that these advertisements have quietly begun showing up within the “Getting Started” and “Inside Xbox” sections of the dashboard, stealthily mixed in with actual content. Some of them even play sound and video when highlighted, so you can’t necessarily avoid them by not clicking. On the plus side, the ads are promoting things like Deadliest Catch and Gamespot’s E3 coverage, but that’s just a hop, skip and jump away from used car commercials. [via Ars Technica]