I completely disagree with this feature, and i will right-away add my complaint with those of all other posters here.
First of all, Darkdrium777 couldn't have resumed it all better.
Also, in-game advertising in WipEout XL/2097 was INTEGRATED to game's concept without being disturbing, aggressive and annoying. Now with this 2.10 update, it's a complete another story.
I don't wanna watch TV ads when i play a game. I don't wanna hear about in-coming games with loud, obnoxious sound effects unrelated to WipEout. There's already constant and intense advertising in the XMB and PStore, i don't really see here the relevance of adding MORE ads in-game.
Plus, like its already mentioned, there's a lot of work to do to fix WipEout numerous problems. But instead of concentrating ALL the efforts of fixing them in the first place, you people at SL conjugates some ressources to find a way that ads won't affect loading times... WHAT THE **** IS GOING ON HERE?!?
-The game still suffers from some stuttering and frame-rate drops.
-The gameplay still suffers from bad collision effects that compromise the fun factor and racing experience.
-The game still suffers from random freezing and crashing - hell, it even happened to me will i was in the GRID SCREEN.
-The freaking voice-chat feature is still inoperative after more than 1 year of existence, for God's sake and all that is holy!!!
And now what, its time to adequately program well-working IN-GAME ADS?!? Jesus guys...
Studio Liverpool, you guys just bifurcated on a very hazardous path. From now on, to anyone asking me how is WipEout HD/Fury, it'll be my pleasure to warn them about the forced and annoying ads featured within the game. Rest assured that when some people will know about that, their motivation toward buying the game will be negatively affected as much as my devotion and appreciation of your work is abruptly experiencing the same...
I really sincerely hope you guys step back from taking this lame decision and remove anything related to that from the great game you brought to life.
Daniel Rondeau, Montréal, Canada