Typ­i­cally on the web, if a ser­vice or app is free then you can assume that you are prob­a­bly going to be see­ing ads because you as the user are in fact what’s being sold.

The Xbox 360 from Microsoft has been a very suc­cess­ful video game con­sole. In order to have access to cer­tain other fea­tures, pri­mar­ily related to online activ­i­ties such as play­ing games against friends, you have to pur­chase a Xbox Live sub­scrip­tion on top of the pur­chase price of the console.

Which is where the ugly details come in.

Peo­ple who don’t play video games would be for­given if they turned on an Xbox 360 and didn’t real­ize it was a device used to pri­mar­ily play games. The first screen you see on the Xbox 360 Dash­board is often a mix­ture of ads for all sorts of goods and ser­vices, and many times games are in the minor­ity of ad slots. The lat­est redesign increased the ad space that can be sold to adver­tis­ers, and that in turn increased this problem.

And it doesn’t sound like it’s going to go away any­time soon since they’re mak­ing so much money.

Read the rest of the arti­cle from The Penny Arcade Report, Ads up, games down: The ugly, prof­itable details about Xbox Live adver­tis­ing.