If there’s one thing the gaming community hates it’s real world advertising creeping into their game world space without any relation to the game their playing. Check out Bionic Commando for a prime example of this in action (the world’s a crumbling mess but Nvidia and Pepsi banners remain untouched).

Now the icy fingers of corporate advertising could not only appear during your game, it could also appear on your dashboard. If you’re a 360 owner that is. Speaking to MediaPost Sean Alexander, director at Microsoft’s Advertising Business Group, discussed the possibility of displaying paid advertisements on the 360 dashboard.

“Microsoft plans to bring IAB specifications for rich media technologies, including Silverlight, to Xbox Live within the year,” says Alexander. “Silverlight-powered media on Xbox will have the same appearance as ads seen on a Web browser.” Which means agencies can develop single campaigns across multiple-platforms and make sure we see it whether we’re at our PCs or consoles.

Perhaps we’re being a little to cynical as official details have yet to be confirmed but part of us can’t help but be annoyed if, as paying Gold subscribers, we’re going to still have non-related advertisements cluttering our beloved dashboard. Hopefully when Natal’s introduced it will allow us to swat the cursed things off-screen, or give them the finger.