Trailing Oculus Ads, Gaming Tourism Comes to Ireland, and some Tasty Gaming Bytes

Facebook looking to inject Advertisements into Paid Oculus Content.
Earlier this week Facebook announced the integration of paid advertisements into Oculus VR games. This initiative was introduced by Facebook to “explore (sic) new ways for developers to generate revenue”, and hints that the advertisements would be used to assist in subsidising VR products to be ”more accessible” at “consumer-friendly prices”. The Verge also reports that Facebook is searching for new ways to implement these unobtrusive ads and new ad formats, all of which are personalised through the user’s Facebook profile and Oculus store history.
Blastion, the first of the games to publicly have the advertisements implemented, have already announced they will be backing out of the trial. Tommy Palm, Resolution Games CEO announced, “Some good points have been made, and we realize that Blaston isn’t the best fit for this type of advertising test.”

Ireland teams up with Assassins Creed for Gaming Tourism
Historically, games have relied on the experience of seeing real-life locations simulated in games to evoke a response in gamers, yet Tourism Ireland is seeking to reverse this in a post-pandemic world to create gaming tourism. This week Tourism Ireland has teamed up with Ubisoft creating a showcase of in-game Irish locations and their real-life locations from the latest DLC for Assassins Creed Valhalla: Wrath of the Druids. Tourism Ireland has also collaborated with several influencers on Twitch with followers in “key tourism markets, including Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain and the Nordic countries”, all with the aim to “inspire [gamers] to come and explore [the locations] in the real world.”

Xbox Design Lab is Back – but not for Aussies.
With the re-release of Xbox Design Lab gamers in the US, Canada and most Western European Countries can finally customise their controllers. While this does not include the Xbox Elite controller, it does offer 18 different colour options for most parts of the controller, with pre-set options for the menu and ABXY buttons, and the option for a 16-character engraving, all on the newly designed Xbox Series X/S controllers. But be careful with your choices – due to the customisation, refunds are currently unavailable… if we could get them in Australia anyway.

Quick Game Bytes;
GTA Online support for PS3 and Xbox 360 will be shut down on the 16^th of December of this year. In the lead up to the shutdown, purchases of in-game currency for these systems will be no longer be available. However, the next-gen console release has been announced for later this year.
And Overwatch now has cross-play support. Now you can go head-to-head with your friends on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC in Quick Play, Arcade, and Custom matches. Due to the unfair advantage PC players have with a mouse and keyboard, PC players will only be matched with other PC players in Competitive Ranked matches.

And now for some game releases
On the 25^th of June, Mario Golf: Super Rush is coming to Switch. Super Squad, a team based, online multiplayer, top down, shoot-em-up is coming to PC. And Bandai Namco’s RPG, Scarlet Nexus is coming to everything but Switch.
Coming out on the 29^th of June is Curved Space, an arcade, twin-stick shooter on everything but the Switch.
On the 30^th of June the visually unique puzzle platformer, A Tale of Synapse: The Chaos Theories comes to PC and the Switch, and finally Doki Doki Literature Club Plus comes to PC, PS4 and 5, Xbox One and X, and the Switch.