In-game advertising took a leap forward with Toyota's Wednesday release of its Xbox Live Arcade Advergame. It is a far cry from the usual in-game billboard; it provides a full scale sponsored game featuring virtual Toyota Yaris cars. Players can download the game for free and get behind the wheel of one and shoot enemies with a tentacle rooted in the car's hood, collecting loose coins, and unlocking a dozen new Xbox Live achievements along the way. Cool, but will it sell any real cars? Toyota is not the first company to produce an entire advergame to promote a product. Burger King has released a trilogy of Xbox and Xbox 360 titles as $3.99 add-ons to combo meals which combined to sell more than 3.2 million copies, according to Gamespot. Yaris is the first advergame to make it to Live Arcade, but more companies are working on advergames for the downloadable Xbox 360 service. For example, PepsiCo has put up a contest looking for concepts for a Doritos-themed game.http://dmwmedia.com/news/2007/10/12/buzz-watch-toyota-yaris-advergame-is-live-on-xbox-arcade
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