I'm very skeptical of your conclusions. Even if ads do become a permanent fixture in Wipeout HD (unlikely), why would they ever become widespread in the industry as a whole, especially in the form of actual commercial breaks? People wouldn't stand for it; there'd be an uproar.

People tolerate product placement in games because it doesn't interfere with the actual gameplay - in some games, it actually adds to the atmosphere. But the same guy who likes seeing the occasional billboard in his favorite skateboarding games would be pretty ticked-off if they actually interrupted his grinds and kickflips with commercials for the same products. As more games add it (again, highly unlikely), the number of ticked-off players grows, eventually reaching the point where you have a mob.

Nobody in the industry cares when a few soccer moms protest video game violence, because they aren't the people who buy games. If you have actual players raging about commercial breaks (and, believe me, they would), though, it's going to turn more than a few executive heads.

Oh, and regarding ProblemSolver's earlier comment that "nobody thought it would happen to TV": filmed commercials actually predate television (they were shown in cinemas before the main feature, just like they are today), and print ads predate filmed commercials (newspapers have had them since at least the 18th century). In reality, few people thought that it wouldn't happen.