The Splinter Cell Essentials Marketing Fracas

Videogame Media Watch has a breakdown on a developing story, yet another example of the sometimes less than stellar relationship game reviews/previews have with game marketing. In essence, Ubisoft used language from a GameSpy preview in their marketing, combining words to get the result they wanted. From the article: "As the 1up article notes, the UbiSoft ad probably does need an ellipsis to note where words were removed from the GameSpy preview. This is hardly the main issue, though, as the difference between 'one of the best games on the PSP' and 'one of the best games we've played on the PSP' is not all that important. A somewhat more salient question: how can a game turn from '...one of the best...' on a system to a 2 out of 5 review in a matter of two-and-a-half months between preview and review? "

Comments

Re:Sucker born every minute.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even better when they use just a single word or two, with zero context.

"This movie was amazing in its level of awfulness. I still find it shocking how bad every single aspect of this movie was. Even the audio was garbled in a couple of scenes, it's simply unbelievable that it came from a major studio."

Then you see the trailer, quoting the review:
"...amazing..."
"...shocking..."
"...unbelievable..."

Re:Because all the games are shit?

[radish]

Sounds like you're buying the wrong games. Burnout is great, GTA is great, Wipeout is great, Hot Shots Golf is insanely great and I heard excellent things about the XMen game (not my scene). There are plenty of good games on the PSP, in fact, if you look at metacritic the numbers are very similar to the DS library, which gets huge praise around most parts.