Game Previews Just Game Marketing?

Kotaku has a feature up today written by James Wagner Au, formerly embedded reporter in the world of Second Life. He's now doing his own thing, and he's got a fairly cynical discussion over at the Kotaku site about the real purpose behind game previews in industry rags. From the article: "For the thing of it is, game magazine previews are almost uniformly positive, even for the most undistinguished titles. So it unrolls thus: publisher makes mediocre game; press previews depict mediocre game as being good or at least worth a look; excited gamers read previews, foolishly believe them, start making pre-sale orders of mediocre game; driven by preview press and pre-sale numbers based on that press, retailers stock up on mediocre game; publisher makes money from mediocre game, keeps making more games like it."

Comments

This industry is unique?

[Harmonious Botch]

Don't most manufacturers of most any product try to influence reviews? Even to the extreme of bribery and/or psuedonyms?

You are kidding right?

[nurb432]

This is some new discovery? Hasnt this been f-ing obvious since day one? Geesh..

Re:Breaking News: Water is wet

[andygood]

Heheh ...the sun is expected to rise tomorrow, the Pope is STILL a Catholic, a frogs ass is indeed watertight, and bears do, in fact, sh!t in the woods...