Y'know, maybe what a publishing company should do w/ these games, is say AFTER a game gets a glowing review from a company like GameSpot, start the advertising campaign all over their site.
It'd make logical sense, instead of doing the ad campaign before the game's actually reviewed.
I understand publishers wanna advertise their game over editorial sites like GameSpot BEFORE-hand to spread the word of the game, but really -- shouldn't they be plastering their before-hand ad campaigns over sites that will ONLY JUST SELL their game (and not review it) ? Like say Amazon? Gogamer??? EBGAMES? Wouldn't that be a better move, logically???
I'm sure Amazon gets WAY more hits than say GameSpot.
Except that doesn't really make sense for anyone involved except the reader of the site. Your game doesn't get a glowing review, but gets a 7.0, do you advertise nowhere at all? It doesn't ease the pressure on reviewers or garuntee non-biased reviews at all, since there's now a direct pressure to rate a game higher so you'll get the advertising. If anything it'll only make things work.
As for advertising on places like Amazon and Go gamer, sure some of the commerce sites get more hits, but in no way does that reflect the numbers of hits they get from the target market. There's a reason large marketing pushes occur before a release of anything, and that's because the initial buzz and illusion of anticipation is something that drives a buyer. It doesn't make business sense for anyone to change the way it works now.
Beyond that, it's not like publishers and developers don't have other ways to extort good reviews if they want. The big sites are only big sites because of the relationships they've fostered and maintained with key players in the business. Take that away and all you're left with are a collections of blogs...something that the video game industry is already over saturated with anyways. Advertising is a necessity for these sites to exist. The only other feasible option on a large scale is a completely subscriber driven system, but one with enough subscribers in order to ensure that the site maintains enough of a user base to stay relevant in the overall scheme of things so they can still get the scoops.
I've seen a lot of people basically dreaming of a world where advertising doesn't exist on these sites in response to this story, and it's kind of stupid. If you're going to have completely unrealistic utopian dreams, why not wish for something bigger?
