Xbox fans livid as startup screen becomes giant Modern Warfare 3 ad

As quick as the celebrations came, they’re now gone, leaving behind mainly annoyance. Oh yes, when Xbox got its hands on Call of Duty, Xbox gamers rejoiced at finally being able to enjoy the perks that PlayStation fans had been enjoying for years. But then the Xbox startup screen turned into a massive Modern Warfare III advert and some fans lost their cool.

To be fair to them, firing up your console to be greeted by a prompt to buy a game you don’t play and/or care about is pretty irritating; I’ve not turned my Xbox on in a while, but I know it would rub me up the wrong way seeing such an ad. And what do gamers do when they’re unhappy? They go on social media to vent their frustrations.

Will the Modern Warfare III campaign trailer make you as angry as Xbox fans?

“This is dumb,” began Twitter user @demossabre. “I don't play Call of Duty; I've never bought Call of Duty. I shouldn't turn on my Xbox and the literal first thing I see be an ad for a game, or anything for that matter. F**k your splash screen.” That last part feels like a slight overreaction, but seeing as how Reddit has been flooded with several threads moaning about this ad, perhaps I’m wrong in my assessment.

On one such thread, which has had its original post deleted by moderators, another Redditor asked, “Dude, did I just see this post on Reddit?”, seemingly baffled by how many times it had been posted about. In response, another user said, “Same. A lot of people have been making posts about this and rightfully so. Hopefully, with enough talk, they'll stop doing it but I doubt it.” There isn’t enough talk in the world to stop people from spamming Reddit with identical posts.

I suspect anger will grow now that Modern Warfare III is available to play for those eager fans looking to drop even more money. Money that, according to numerous rumours, is for under five hours of gameplay, essentially proving that the “game” is just glorified DLC.

Should you want to waste your money, you can buy the cross-console version of Modern Warfare III for £69.99 on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.