Xbox And Sony Put Enormous 3D Ads On The Las Vegas Sphere, And You Have To See Them

Ahead of the holiday season, many companies ramp up their marketing efforts, and Xbox and PlayStation are no different. Microsoft purchased ad space on the Las Vegas Sphere to promote the Xbox brand and Sony paid to promote the recent launch of Spider-Man 2. The companies may have paid top dollar for their promos.

The Sphere was taken over by a massive Xbox advertisement. The multimedia display shows the iconic green Xbox logo and then transitions into clips of Starfield, Hellblade II, Forza, and Cyberpunk 2077. The sequence ends with a sizzle of the three main Xbox consoles--the Xbox Series X, the 512GB Xbox Series S, and the 1TB Xbox Series S.

The PlayStation ad, meanwhile, promoted the launch of Spider-Man 2 from Insomniac Games. But ads look absolutely stunning, and you can see them below.

According to 3LV, a one-day ad campaign on the Las Vegas Sphere could carry a price tag of $450,000, with a one-week run selling for a reported $650,000. These numbers stem from an agency pitch deck and might be out of date or in some other way not representative of what Microsoft and Sony could have paid to advertise on the Sphere.

The Sphere took years to build and carried a cost of $2.3 billion. Vegas Sphere CEO James Dolan obviously wants to make money on the Sphere, and selling ads on the outside of the venue is one way to do that. The Sphere also hosts the ongoing U2 residency and will show Darren Aronofsky's 18K movie Postcard From Earth.

Microsoft just completed its $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which means Microsoft now owns Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Candy Crush, and many more. Fans should not expect any Activision Blizzard games to appear on Game Pass until 2024, however.