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Preview Bias in Portable War Coverage?
KaiEl writes "Is Nintendo being penalized in the press for releasing their Nintendo DS before Sony's PSP? That's the quesiton I ask in a recent post on The Video Game Ombudsman. While DS games are being held up to the harsh standard of hands-on reviews, PSP coverage is mostly rosy glow previews and lofty PR promises. Readers comparing the two very different types of writing might notice a "preview bias" that seems endemic to video game writing. Is this a serious problem, or am I just expecting too much from what is simply a preliminary review?"
Everyone is just waiting for Nintendo to blunder their way out of YET ANOTHER market.
Right, like the GC was a huge money sink hole, losing hundreds of millions a year. and the GBa and GBA sp were horrible paving the way for the N-gage to steal market share....
As far as I know, the GC is doing better world wide then the xbox, doing almost the same as the xbox in North America and is both makign money and havign a steady stream of hits. If my blunders are half as successful, I'd be more then happy with my life.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Apparently, somebody isn't familiar with the typical cycle of game reviews:
DS games have had hands-on reviews, while the typical PSP title is still enjoying the butt-kissing that comes from a well-orchestrated demo to the TGRSs.
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Previews are ridiculous.
up until recently, I worked at a place making an FPS, and I was always astounded at howpositive, or at least "neutral" the previews were. We'd cut them a build and think "Oh man, this is so shit" and we'd get back reviews that say things like "This game shows a lot of promise!" or "We can't wait to see the finished game!!" and other such BS previews. Half of the material in there was marketing crap as well.
So. Yes, I agree it is a problem. While we still suffer from IGN-style reviews (their rating system goes from 9.0 to 10.0 I think), the previews are even worse.
If the previews were bad, they wouldn't get all the nice free crap from game companies, and they wouldn't sell as many ads.
i don't know what my point was.. but previews are definitely waaay too generous.
Nor does Pepsi complain about being #2 to coke in sales.
That's because Pepsi doesn't sell coke.
1. People would rather read PSP hype because it fills them with anticipation, even if they aren't going to buy one. All of the people who were excited about the DS and didn't buy one are over it.
2. The DS isn't worth writing about right now due to a lack of interesting games. How many screenshots of Metroid Hunters do people really want to see? Until Nintendo and third party developers start pumping out software don't expect much more than "ho-hum, Mario 64 is just as cool as it was in 1996, BFD."
3. Adult gamers got burned with the Game Boy Advance software lineup being almost entirely of horribly designed, unplayable children's games with TV and movie tie-ins. Because of this, most game magazines relegated Game Boy news to the back of the magazines. EGM even gave Seanbaby a column to mock all those crappy Game Boy Advance Games. Readers have responded well, so why wouldn't the press be fine assuming that reader's don't really care about the DS?
Actually, it's Nintendo that hates the English (and the rest of Europe to boot). They are infamous for their poor PAL conversions, late release dates (waiting more than six months for a huge game like Metroid Prime is not unusual), ridiculously high prices, just not bothering to release certain big games (Animal Crossing for example), and even (recent) masssive price fixing that has pissed off multiple governments. It's no wonder Europeans favor non-Nintendo companies like Sony and MS! (Which both incidentally also work with a far higher amount of European developers, too. Much of the PS1's huge success was due to European games like Wipeout, and Xbox has had large success with games like PGR2 and Rallisport Challenge.)
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon