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Famitsu For Beginners
Via Kotaku, a post on the forums at the selectbutton site that may interest you. Famitsu is the gaming bible for a lot of people, but not all of us have the language skills required to follow it. Many more are confused by what's seen as 'buying review scores', a practice that's more about the realities of the magazine's role than about corruption. From the article: "What Famitsu is -- and you wouldn't know this unless you've held a heavy issue in your hand on a tired Friday morning -- is straightforward (if not entirely honest) PR in a pretty, meaty, high-quality bundle. It's an advertisement feast. If the western concepts of 'journalistic integrity' are distorted and twisted within its pages, they're done so very lovingly. Because, you see, that degree of over-thinking really doesn't exist here. You can cry 'viral!!!!!!!!!!!!' and 'TEH PAID!!!!!!!!!!' all you want at Famitsu's features and articles. However, you can't change that it's a hell of a thing to look at on the train on Friday morning, or at lunch on Friday afternoon; it provides stimulating topics of conversation (for geekos) over Friday dinner." So, as Kotaku's Luke Plunkett says '[This is] why we all ignored the scores they gave Sonic, but paid attention when games like Blue Dragon and Lost Planet won them over.'
Which is better, a company which openly accepts money in exchange for better reviews/hype or a company which (behind closed doors) exchanges better reviews for money; because that is (pretty much) what print game magazines all are.
With a few exceptions, you will notice that many magazines have a tendency to give higher reviews to games that have "invested" in several issues worth of full page advertizements.
But it makes sense. If it is true it answers a lot of questions but raises one last one. Why the fuck do American news media keeping posting their scores? It really does sound like a hype rag.
.... you get my point. Over inflated ratings doesn't exactly inspire confidence in my book.
Personally Famitsu has had decent ratings for a lot of games, however they tend to have higher then normal ratings, which means higher then IGN, which is higher then gamespot (though gamespot has little basis so it's not as good as IGN according to me) which is higher then
Personally I'd like to see someone back up the (original) post but then again it's a forum post so who knows, especially when the guy talks about his cred being because he "eats" with the guy? But it is some very damning information and personally one of the reasons I think I'll start passing when the topic of famitsu scores come up.
Though I hope this information starts getting main stream attention because it's very interesting if nothing else.
How did this end up on the front page? All I got from this is that "Japan has a big gaming magazine, that is biased, but Kotaku and Zonk like it. You should read it, but you probably don't speak Japanese". I think this is the worst front page story I have seen on /. in my umpteen years of sifting through drivel.
So what is the news? Japan has paid for review magazine like the US (and rest of the world), but people expect this and don't complain?
Wow.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
n/t
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
But does it come in Esperanto?
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
You could always stop whining about it and learn Japanese. It's not *quite* as hard as everyone says =P
In all seriousness though, the text in Famitsu isn't all that worthwhile anyways. The main reason to pick up Famitsu is to ogle at exclusive pretty pictures from games that won't be out for a while yet. Which I think may also be the main point of this story.
the biased japanese game magazines read YOU!
It's like how Nintendo Power used to be?
/. is on the take from a big gaming magazine published in Japan!
Heh.
Nue Jerundo Jin Desu. Poster-San wa Baka desu.
I hope you're not just joking, because this post would be funnier if you weren't.
Funnier cause Id be a stereotypical "ignorant American"?
Well, yes. I'm not saying that not being bilingual makes you ignorant. But dismissing the idea of learning a foreign language is certainly nearsighted, if nothing else. Also, you forgot an apostrophe.
That may be true that its not hard to learn Japanese. It IS hard to learn Japanese and retain it for more than a day or so. Hell, the only Japanese I can remember is your a idiot, your a pervert, whats your name, my name is and how to count to 99. maybe a few other tidbits I cant recall. and thats in Romanji. Theres also Katakana, Hiragana and the other forms you need to know. Romanji is just plain ol' english text. Just think about that, its alot for the adverage english speaker to take in.
Call me crazy, but isn't Famitsu just Cosmopolitian magazine (or any of those other women's magazines that are 90% advertising)? Most of the "content" of the magazine is ads, and the "articles" and "reviews" are thinly-disguised ads. Famitsu is so popular in Japan in part because of the general Japanes fetish for magazines, and partly because the are MUCH bigger whores than then Western gaming press. It's a lot cheaper to put together a magazine if all of your content is submitted by advertisers. The comparison to GameSpot or EDGE isn't correct, Famitsu is more like "Official Playstation Magazine" or Nintendo Power.
Now maybe you WANT 250 pages of ads, but I doubt it.