The Big Bad Console Thread - Sway your Station with an Xboner !

Literally, insider.

Utnayan_sl said:

Agree and disagree. We aren't talking about companies getting 3-4 PS4's for their office so the reviewer can come in and do their job. We are talking about each one of them getting one to take home to play on their own personal time. There is a difference.

I agree in the fact they need this to do their jobs. I do not think that the systems should be given away on an individual level to take home with them for personal use. If they want to do that, they should have to buy one like everyone else and keep the reviewers in their offices playing review copies of games.

Either way, a lot of the organizations in charge of the review sites are paid off anyway, so it wouldn't do any good.

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They did not get those PS4s to take home. Those are all Office PS4s, or are supposed to be anyways.

You think they don't work after hours at home playing games for reviews? As he says in the video, he works 7 days a week, not all of that is gonna be in the office.

Utnayan_sl said:

Yeah thing is, a lot of them went home from what I understood. Anyone who titled themselves as "Freelance", took it home. Obviously would need to see the numbers on this.

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Yeah, some people clearly did that. The bigger sites have them for office work though. They were actually the most annoyed at the event, since they usually have different reviewers cover different games and could only send like 1-2 people to the thing.

Sony really should have just shipped them the stuff so they could do their work normally + also offer people to come over the event.

Review events are dumb.

Thank god, Brandon's voice is back:Need for Speed Rivals Review | GameTrailers

This game kinda makes me wish I was into racing games with how atypical it is. Sadly by the time I would have money to buy this now I'm not sure that I'll be willing to jump into it.

Resogun a bit before work - Time for work *edited*

The relationship between reviewers and the companies that have products that get reviewed is always a bit complicated, no matter the industry. The companies job is to court the reviewers and try to steer what they talk about and how they talk about it. The courting can go overboard and make the companies feel the reviewers are indebted to them somehow and make them enter strange games of blackmail for access if they feel the reviewers are not treating them well (a complain that is sometime legitimate). This get increasingly complicated if the reviewer works for a media that contains advertisements space that the companies buy. In the end it's a balancing act and as such it can fail spectacularly if the reviewer has no integrity (not uncommon in the video game industry considering many reviewers are enthusiasts that want to be cool and get free stuff) and if the companies don't understand that reviewers are not outsourced PR (also not uncommon in the video game industry as most of the sales rep' reviewers have to deal with don't see video games as a cultural product).

I took part in that dance for 10 years and I certainly don't regret that aspect of the job at all (I also don't regret the mix of procrastination and writer's block that made for too many sleepless nights on the eve of deadlines).


Full disclosure for Utnayan: All the free shit was sent straight to my home where all the testing and writing took place. Occasionally, stuff was bought when we wanted to talk about a game that the distributor or publisher did not provide (another layer of complexity in Switzerland comes from the fact the two main distributors are owned respectively by Ubi and EA).

Szlia_sl said:

The courting can go overboard and make the companies feel the reviewers are indebted to them somehow and make them enter strange games of blackmail for access if they feel the reviewers are not treating them well (a complain that is sometime legitimate).

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Heh, Jim Sterling has actually been blacklisted by a few companies. I read that he's on Konami's shit list and he's pretty much said flat out that Microsoft now refuses to talk to him (which is making his new job as some head editor or something at The Escapist difficult).

This is the only fucking review you should trust. Fuck video game reviewers.

PlayStation 4 Review | New Gaming Console - Consumer Reports News

Abefroman_sl said:

This is the only fucking review you should trust. Fuck video game reviewers.

PlayStation 4 Review | New Gaming Console - Consumer Reports News

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Meh, video game review sites are important for previews and such. Those things are actually useful to me since I generally buy stuff before reviews are out.

Man, how shit are the launch titles for these next-gen moneyhogs?

Have my PS4. Updating it currently. Every click and sound makes me nervous as hell.

axeman_sl said:

Man, how shit are the launch titles for these next-gen moneyhogs?

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Most are good but none are must-haves I would say. Enjoying the killzone single player, reminds me a lot of terminator salvation, except without robots

My only problem with Sterlings video is the constant "we need to get sent this stuff as they are the tools of our jobs and we need to get them for free to do our job".....tell a plumber/electrician/coder that you deserve to get tools of your trade for free to do your job and watch their reaction.

Knytestorme_sl said:

tell a plumber/electrician/coder that you deserve to get tools of your trade for free to do your job and watch their reaction.

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Wow, that is a really horrible comparison and you should feel bad about posting it.