Slashdot Mirror
A Shoe To The Head For Game Journalism
On Wednesday we reported on an editorial by EGM editor Dan Hsu making claims that publications and web sites were 'selling' reviews for ad revenue. Shoe has since posted the original editorial to his blog, along with some commentary on why he makes the claims but doesn't name names. From the article: "My industry pisses me off. I was a little suspicious of the cover choices one of our competitors was making, so I checked in with a contact of mine from a major game publisher. 'Yes,' he confirmed. 'We can pretty much get whatever cover we want from that magazine. All it takes is for us to meet with the publisher, promise that we'll buy some ads, and discuss the details from there.' So...that magazine's cover stories are for sale. Great." Kyle Orland's VGM Watch steps in for some commentary on the broader picture.
Seems a bit amusing to hear that sort of thing from EGM (no doubt referring to Game Informer) when EGM is often knocked for praising Sony excessively while trashing Microsoft. Of the publications out there, GI has far and away shown the least amount of bias, and in fact I seem to recall there being an award given to the entire GI staff last year for best video game reporting or something along those lines. GI also has the least to gain from bias, because it is a division of GameStop. If GI took a slant towards one publisher or another, then other publishers might decide not to give GameStop the volume price discounts that, say, Best Buy would get. Same with Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo.