He has more money than he knows what to do with.

If he's truly smart and wins this election, he'll create a govt program that will help purchase these types of games and systems (or hand them out for free) for when he runs for relection in 4 years.

You obviously don't understand how this works.  It's only in the ONLINE version - the XBox Live version.  If you play it at home, offline, the billboards have fake advertisements.  If you play it online you see whatever billboards companies or people want to pay for.  In other words - after the election, you won't see an Obama ad again in Burnout.  It'll be farmed out to Pepsi or Gamespot or whatever sucker wants to pay for it.

so in other words, it's EXACTLY the same as a real billboard - only cheaper and easier to change.

I don't even like racing games.

~Zoo

Well thanks for clearing that up SanCho. I am not perfect so am bound to get things wrong from time to time. Shame the article did not mention that though. Still, I don't want to be playing a game where I am looking to get away from the real world only to find myself having the real world thrown at me in a virtual way. Although I have to wonder, considering I have played games like Need for Speed's various versions, Burnout and others, at the speeds I drive, I can't imaging paying attention to these billboards in the game. Still, the idea that I know they will be there really bites.

That it is.  I just re-read the original article, and they certainly don't make that clear.

I know, my thoughts exactly.  Hope I didn't come off too harsh, my friend.  Wasn't my intent, but I was cranky this morning.

 Not to worry...Sarah Palin has billboards coming out in NHL '09!  JK!!!

~SH80

I thought hers were going to be in 'Shoot a Wolf From An Airplane '09'?

Nah, you made a good point. I didn't make sure to check that. Still, I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been embeded in the game itself. I wonder if GTA 4 has this? Now there's a game with plenty of billboards that one could actually notice. But then I would simply crash a chopper into one with Obama's face or at least shoot some missiles from the jets.

I'd much rather see her as one of the cheerleaders on the mega screens.

Now there's a game I would actually buy rather than download. The receipt would read something like this

Shoot a Wolf From An Airplane '09' - $49.99

Crusin USA - Race Across 57 States - $49.99 Tax free

I actually don't see how this is different from any other kind of in-game advertising. I find marketing through commercials on television and in-game billboards or posters to be quite obnoxious, irrespective of the product. I guess I'd put a lot of people out of work, but if it were up to me, I'd probably ban all broadcast advertising except for non-profits.

Maybe not TV, but on video games which we buy with the intentions of playing and not necessarily looking for commercials in them, I would probably agree. I don't mind commercials because sometimes I find things I wouldn't have otherwise known about, I just don't think I have to have commercials role thru TV shows 5 times in half an hour.