Main > Consoles
PS3 pulling a Saturn?
ChadTower:
--- Quote from: shmokes on September 04, 2006, 01:34:03 pm ---Having an opinion isn't bias.
--- End quote ---
No, an opinion is not in and of itself bias. Using it as a means of drawing readers as a means of drawing advertisers as a means of drawing revenue is pretty much pure motivation for bias.
Plus, I don't care what those tools think. They're not the ones that earn my money.
shmokes:
But it doesn't work that way. It can't work that way.
A #1: How do you explain the fact that there are so many poor reviews on those websites (we're talking 1's 2's and 3's, etc.), even for games made by major publishing houses, including those owned by Sony and, to a lesser extent, Nintendo (they sometimes get not-great reviews, but Nintendo so rarely releases real crap and this fact is reflected in the reveiws)? How do you explain that NFL Gameday 2000 for PSX (a Sony 1st party game) got an 8.9, while NFL Gameday 2001 for PS2 got a 5.8 from Gamespot?
B #2: The very mechanism you suggest as the source of bias would actually work exactly the opposite. The more readers these websites get, the more ad revenue they get. Artificially inflating reviews of games to satisfy advertisers might create a VERY short-term boost in ad revenue, but when readers who rely on those reviews to help make purchasing decisions go out and buy a crappy game based on a glowing review, that person has plenty of other sources available for game journalism. Bogus reviews would repel, rather than draw in new readers, and the drop in circulation would mean less ad revenue.
C #3: The reviewers of these games almost certainly have NOTHING to do with the ad department or website maintanance. Most magazines deliberately keep the ad department completely separated (physically as well as departmentally) from the journalists to avoid the types of conflicts of interest you're talking about.
FWIW, look at the letter the head of the Wii chanel at IGN wrote to developers (or just take my word for it). He's warning them that IGN plans to severely ding Wii game ratings for games that do not support 16x9 widescreen and progressive scan (both of which were perfectly possible and quite common on the Gamecube). Do you think nobody will notice if every game sans 16x9 and progressive scan gets dinged except for EA games?
These are not evil corporate minions. They're gamers. When they like a game, it gets a good review. When they don't like a game, it gets a bad review. You have to wear blinders to come to any other conclusion. There is simply no explanation for the hundreds of terrible reviews given out for every game system if what you say is true. There is also no explanation for why, if the reviews are bought, the games that receive a high review are so often ACTUALLY great games and why those that receive poor reviews are so often ACTUALLY crap. And there's no explanation for why, in the vast majority of instances, a game receives near universal praise, indifference, or drubbing among all the reviewers from all the various publications.
ChadTower:
You win because I'm not reading that.
Otraotaku:
i stated this in this Thread already that IGN is Sony Freindly. focused towards the PS2 source more than anything else. most of the time PS2 gets the main page/poll's and the most amount of editors
SNAAKE:
ps1 had THE best library of games. there was just too many good games.