That's a menu with choices of which game mode you want to play (keep in mind it's nearly 5,000px wide and you only see part of the left edge at first), not a pointless interstitial ad type experience. Similar to opening most modern games I think?

If you click/tap one of the tiles for the classic game modes, like "easy", you see a brief loading screen with nothing but a Minesweeper flag icon, and then go straight to the game and there are no ads on that next screen.

It still downloads the ads. I just checked with wireshark.

It's a joke. I'm not letting it near my network.

Out of curiosity, do you avoid all ad-supported freeware? This seems no less innocuous than other popular free apps with ads like Words with Friends, Skype, Evernote, Trillian, etc.

That's a fair point about the pre-loading when you likely will never even see it. That doesn't really bother me, but I can see your point there. Would it bother you significantly less if it only loaded the ad on-demand in the rare instance that you actually scrolled that far right?

I don't know if I'd use "Words with Friends" as an example of a non-scammy ad-based app. Because since Zynga bought them they turned evil as hell. I moved to Wordfeud, bought myself an ad-free experience, and have been happy ever since.

Yes I do. All of them.

I'd rather pay for something which is not ad supported.

So, are you saying it would make you happy if an ad-less Minesweeper were available in the Store for a couple dollars?

I prefer buying paid apps when they're available too. I don't play a ton of games, but I own the paid version of the ones I play that offer both choices (Words with Friends, Letterpress, Drop7).

I think we're seeing that pricing model fade away though, particularly in the gaming segment. Developers have discovered that only a tiny minority of paid games will be popular enough to hit the Angry Birds jackpot, driving them toward ads or IAP approaches instead. Even when they do hit that jackpot, some popular paid apps are struggling to subsist in the long term with no mechanism for paid upgrades (e.g. Sparrow).

Yes 100% I would be happy if they then took a couple of dollars off the price of Windows to compensate.

My issue is that this is a built in feature/program which has been around for at least 20 years which now has advertising with no opt out pumped into it and the base price of the OS is still more expensive than ever.

So for the Window 8 upgrade, I gain advertising pumped into my existing applications and get charged for the privilege. Fuck 'em.

That's not true. The Windows 8 Pro "System Builder" license is the same price as 7 Pro, not "more expensive than ever." The upgrade is only $40 for the next two months, going up to $70 in February, which is the cheapest its ever been. So, they took more than a couple dollars off the price. Happy?

I'm still having the hardest time understanding why you seem to be so angry about this, of all things to focus on about Windows 8.

That's US pricing. It's different over here in Europe.

What are the prices there?

"Microsoft Windows 8 Pro 32-bit DVD - OEM" is £105 GBP (~ $170 USD).

"Microsoft Windows 8 32-bit DVD - OEM" is £77 GBP (~ $120 USD).

Prices include "sales tax" known locally as VAT.

How do those prices compare to the UK pricing for the same SKUs of Windows 7? Do you get the discounted Win8 upgrade deal there too?

Windows 7 Pro OEM = 82 GBP ex VAT

Windows 7 Home Premium OEM = 55 GBP ex VAT

Large difference!

There are a number of Win8 upgrade restrictions in the UK AFAIK including you can only upgrade retail PKUs (not previously purchased OEM ones). The deal is 25 GBP for the upgrade.