Why "free to start" legal but not "free with independent ads"?

I understand that developers and publishers and Xbox needs to make money off the various things they do.

I was talking to someone in Intellivision Amico about publishing, and I noticed they had very big restrictions like they're trying to restrict it to just small size games.

I thought that would be the perfect place where you could put a totally free game and have it paid for by advertisers.

Then intellivsion took a stand and said no advertising.

That reminded me of the only console game that I know of that has independent advertising: Xbox 360s One Versus 100 where the main sponsor was Sprint back when they were trying to get people on cellular Xbox. I was one of those people who got cellular for Xbox because the only other connections in my area were literally dial up and satellite (and AT&T but they had the edge versus Sprint's 3G at the time.)

Then I remembered why one versus 100 quit because Sprint stop paying for one out of every four commercials during the interactive gane show. And they stopped sponsoring in 2010 was because Federal regulations made it harder for Sprint to be an alternative to DSL in rural areas. So if there was no advantage to Sprint in targeting Gamers what's the point of sponsoring an indirect of game show hence the first moment they could have pulled out they did. And when they pulled out so did everyone else.

That brings up a question. I know the timing suggested that Sprint pulled out voluntarily due to Federal restricting of cellular as a gaming internet, but I don't know that for sure. Was there anything going on at Xbox the kind of canceled the game other than Sprint pulling out because of what I said?

Obviously Intellivision made a stand about no commercials and games. If I were to propose a game to be made on Xbox Live that was live interactive and free and broadcast commercials every so often, would that still be licensed by Xbox or does Xbox suddenly have commercialitis?

Maybe that's the way you could have free trials of games too. The Xbox 360 was the last system that required All Digital in the game to have a trial mode because of the "free sample theory": if someone tries something and doesn't like it they can't get refunded because there was an opportunity to get a free sample for everything. The problem was that people were coming over and over for lots of taste spoons that equalled a gallon of ice cream.

Commercials can solve that problem too.

And in theory you could have option where where you could either pay for a permanent ad-free license or watch ads whenever you play.

Probably those who think their game will be played only one time at the most will prefer the license option. Those who think their game will be played over and over and over again would probably prefer the commercial thing. And some who want to just attract more customers will probably offer both a paid license option and a free ad based option.

And I agree the difference between the cure and a different kind of poison is the dose. If we limited commercials to 5 to 10 minutes of commercial content per hour real time that would be enough. And also rule of no double dipping once someone pays for an ad-free license, they get no ads on your game.

Also that could be a way to encourage first-hand game sales as opposed to the second hand used market. New games come with a one-time unlockable ad-free code. But use this exploding around will have to have partial ad time, less ads than a sampler but more ads than buying it factory fresh on day one.

I have an idea for one of those " little " games, mainly card games that can be played online and I thought the best way to offer it was try before you buy, Or watch a 30-second ad to get 5 minutes of gameplay. And for various different versions of the card game you achieve expert status in, I was going to award a special experts-only version. If I get permission from someone in an Xbox form I like to tell the website where I have printed descriptions of rules of more expert card games using a new deck.

:)