Video Game Advertising on the PS3 Sucks

A few days ago I upgraded to firmware 3.0 on my Playstation 3 and I must say while I enjoy the new trophy features I am really saddened by what I have lost. What I have lost, is a clean interface. The PS3 now has a 'Playstation Store' icon in every part of the XMB, it is actually quite horrible that they took the opportunity to do this without even giving people the option to turn it off like they did back when the original 'information bar' was added a few updates ago. Advertising by itself is not bad. I have no problem with advertising and I even work for an advertising company, but I am not learning anything from these ads. I am getting no benefit from them other than the annoyance of having to click past them. It is really the main reason why I also unsubscribed from the Playstation Store newsletter. All of the news for the PSN store I get from Joystiq and Kotaku days before the Thursday update. They send the newsletter on Saturdays. It's old news. I am all for them to keep the ads there, as long as they let me turn them off. If I care enough to go through the menu system to turn them off then they must know that I am also somebody who already spends well over $15/month on Playstation Store games. "Oh, but let them advertise because PSN is free" Absolutely not. The fact that I do not pay for PSN like people who pay for Xbox Live does not mean that Sony can just advertise on it. In fact, I would totally love it if Sony makes a premium PSN service that gives people actual features that would not be available if you didn't pay. Features like backing up of game saves on their servers and integration with some of the more popular Social Networking websites around the web. Oh and paying for Xbox Live doesn't stop you from getting ads either. Why are you spending so much time on the XMB anyways?! I don't really spend that much time on the XMB, but I spend enough time on it that they're starting to bother me every time I'm just browsing. Again, its more of the aesthetics of the whole thing, it just makes it seem cluttered and its also pointless since I know what I'm going to buy before the Playstation Store is even updated.