Xbox advert banned by ASA

It’s game over for some recent advertising for the Xbox 360, as the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned the advert for not making it clear that downloaded films could only be saved for fourteen days.

The advert mentioned the fact that the service requires an Xbox 306 with a hard drive, but failed to mention, even in the small print, that downloaded films would not be available to the user after fourteen days, and would expire twenty four hours after the user had started to watch the film.

Microsoft did argue that they couldn’t explain all of the features of the Xbox in the time allowed in a TV advert, but the ASA had received a complaint from the public and were therefore obliged to investigate it.

ASA found that because the advert was focussed on the download aspect, consumers could have been misled about the terms applied to downloaded films.