Loonyyy said:
NPC009 said:
Well, I guess more info could be gained from interviews, but companies have every right to say no to those and very few indivuals would be willing to risk their job so the masses can hear about the new AssCreed setting early.
No. But it'd be nice to have a heads up before an Asscreed Unity or Arkham Knight drops.
Companies announce games months, often years in advance with or without the involvement of the press. It's to their advantage to keep the consumer aware of their product.
The way the press works at present, they regurgitate the releases the company wants,
Like I said before, if a company is both subject and source, press releases will be a big part of news. What the press should do, is be critical towards both subject and source. Obtaining those press releases and sharing them in a manner that's useful to readers, that is their service towards their readers.
they write a review to release at launch,
Well, yeah, that's when people want to read reviews, not weeks after. Of course it's nice to publish reviews a little earlier, but you can't do that if you don't have access to an early copy. The press has to rely on publishers for that, and to be honest, embargoes aren't all bad. For instance, the European one for Xenoblade Chronicles X is 30 nov, half a week before release. Many reviewers have had their digital copy for over a week now. They're okay with us sharing impressions before that. All Nintendo of Europe wants is that the reviews are concentrated around launch to optimise the amount of attention the game gets. This is good for readers, because they should be able to read thorough reviews right on time. It's also nice for the critics, because we have don't have to rush through the game (or only sample a small portion of it!) to get the clicks we need to stay alive. In cases like this everyone wins.
and them once the Publisher has raked in all of the preorder and Day 1 sales money, the gamer, the reader, gets fucked in the ass by both of them.
If you decide to buy a game before it's even out, that's your responsibility. No one is forcing you to take that risk.
The journalists report on the trailers, the announcements, the goodies in the Special Editions, get people hyped up and preordering, reap the traffic of all that, and then the review, and the publisher gets some lovely coverage (Which is what they want). At present, what we get is what hype wants, which is what both publisher wants first, and what we want second. It should be us first, and that annoys the publisher, too bad.
And at the same time that's the kind of thing people like reading about. If the press is there to serve the reader, shouldn't they atleast share the facts?
There's not a massive amount of investigative or boundary pushing stuff that can be done, but we should all be a little disappointed with the state of things at present. At present, they don't take a critical eye to those releases. Look at this site. There's a bunch of cookie cutter reports every day with a link to another site which wrote on it originally, and it's all press material that the publishers want us to see. For one, ideally we shouldn't see every bit of hype being reported on. This drip feed of advertising. Obviously that's not going to happen. Someone wants to read it, and it's going to be there. We're our own worst enemy like that.
Yep, that bolded part, that's a big part of the problem. Even if the press is critical, it's no use if the readers aren't.
And if the coverage was cynical or critical, we'd see more of this. "We didn't like what you said about our trailer. We're going to let the other outlets know first, you're going to have to follow them". You know, like we're seeing here, or in other blacklisting cases.
I doubt it. There's a whole spectrum of stances you can take towards press releases, and the right one depends of the release and the publication. Some publications prefer to stick to the facts ('The new trailer shows a new playable character. She wields two swords.'), others go for the enthousiastic fan approach ('Her dual-wielding style looks promising and we'd love to test it ourselves'.), or even cautionary ('She wields two swords. Sadly, the series does not have a good track record with this style.'). Unless you're consistently unreasonably critical (as in, focusing only on the negative and stirring baseless controversy), publishers have little reason to put you on their ignore-list, because they need the press, perhaps even more than the press needs them.