On the launch day of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, some Xbox users discovered a large takeover ad for the game on their console's home screen upon startup. The campaign theme also replaced players' previously set custom backgrounds, causing dissatisfaction among some users.
This background replacement can be manually disabled. Users need to go to "Settings," select "General," then "Personalization," followed by "My background," and uncheck "Show campaign theme background" to turn off the effect.
Xbox has previously featured promotional spots for major games within its system interface, but this controversy centers on ads directly overriding personalized backgrounds. Even if users are not interested in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, they may still see full-screen promotions upon starting their consoles.
Meanwhile, Xbox is testing an ad-supported free version of Xbox Cloud Gaming. Matthew Ball, Xbox's Chief Strategy Officer, has stated that advertising could be a solution to the "two-sided problem" of rising development costs and consumers' reluctance to pay more. EA has also launched the EA Advertising platform, planning to integrate ads directly into gameplay. At the time, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 held a Metacritic score of 84.