:: adgruntie :: Xbox crosses the line

+ One of the The Boston Globe's critics isn't fond of the way in which Microsoft crossed the lines with it's 30 minute informercial for the Microsoft Xbox 360 presented by Elijah Wood.

the infomercial was called ''MTV Presents Xbox: The Next Generation Revealed," and not ''Microsoft Presents." It appeared in the middle of MTV's nightly schedule looking suspiciously similar to an MTV news report on the history of gaming in general and what one MTV correspondent called ''the holy grail of gaming." It was never clearly designated as an ad or as paid programming.

Which is not uncommon (as the article states) anymore. But it's a question of will your audience get pissed off when they realize they've been duped? Or will they figure that the information being presented to them is more interesting and outweighs the dubiousness of deception? It's a hard call to make for some target groups. And I'm sure there's a researcher out there some where (or maybe even more) who will say otherwise, but making the line between editorial and programming and advertising as blurry as possible cannot have a happy outcome in the end. Aren't well all cynical enough?