SEGA has inadvertently let the proverbial cat-out-of-the-bag about Sonic the Hedgehog’s future game appearances, evidenced by the graphic above that was located on the official Sonic 4 website. The image reveals two important elements, including a release date (July 2010) and available platforms, which include the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade and the long-rumored and now confirmed, iPhone (and iPad).
Proof can be found here, though the image has apparently been removed by undoubtedly embarrassed representatives of SEGA.
The Federal Trade Commission has voted 4-0 that bloggers must now disclose any payments or freebies they receive in exchange for reviewing a product. Fines for failing to disclose this information are currently set at $11,000 per offense. As someone who has written thousands of game reviews, features, interviews and previews for a wide-variety of offline and online media (using several different pen names, so you might as well stop searching), I welcome this ruling with open arms.
The state of videogame journalism has never been as low as it is right now. Countless bloggers are on the take, eager to take those freebie trips to one event after another, put up in nice hotels with comped dinners, supplied with endless swag and secret advertising deals in exchange for a positive spin on a new product. When radio was a dominant force, this kind of activity was called Payola and it happens to be illegal. For far too long, the videogame industry has been getting away with murder in how it behaves with magazines and websites.
If I were to ever divulge the offers made to me over my 20 years in the industry, your hair would turn white. Much to my credit, I never buckled and kept my integrity intact, though the same can’t be said for the vast majority of sites out there who are actively involved in incestuous relationships with the very companies they are expected to be critical of. Perhaps I’ll write a book about my experiences some day, when I have plenty of money to fend off the inevitable lawsuits.
It was just yesterday that I was looking at release dates for videogames for the remainder of the year and I noticed Blur as releasing within a week of Forza 3. I thought too myself, “Self, Blur is going to get killed, even if it’s the greatest racing game ever.”
Someone must have been reading my mind, as it has just been announced that Blur, the new game from Bizarre Creations (Project Gotham Racing and Geometry Wars), has been pushed into 2010. The official line is predictable:
“…give the development team more time to enhance the game’s innovative and distinctive online multiplayer gameplay. We are committed to making Blur a great new racing franchise, and we are very encouraged by the game’s design,” said Activision CEO Mike Griffith in a press release.
That’s PR speak for, “We don’t want to compete with Forza 3.”
A demo for hardcore flight-sim IL-2 Sturmovik is now available on the Xbox 360, weighing in at 1.22-gigs. Demo contains two playable scenarios, including The Battle of Britain and The Battle of the Bulge. Hopefully IL-2 Sturmovik isn’t too dumbed-down when compared to its PC brethren, as the Xbox could use a flight-sim with meat on its bones, not another glorified shooting gallery like some other games I could mention.
It’s obvious when embargoes are lifted in the game industry, as nearly every video game site under the sun suddenly posts the same derivative article at approximately the same time. Embargoes are a scourge, a powerplay by the Publisher’s PR arm handling a video game, which serves no positive purpose for anyone involved. It dillutes the media for gaming sites and compresses the exposure of a game into a single day.
I mean, how many BioShock 2 previews do we need posted on a single day? You’d think a publisher would want the exposure spread out over time, keeping the brand in your head up till the day of release, but no. PR teams think it best that previews all hit on the same day. Worse, the various sites are more than willing to play along, willingly giving up whatever power they may have had. [The whole industry is so controlled by publishers that there is essentially no choice. No access = no info = no audience. Only totalitarian governments have more of a stranglehold over the media that covers them. If any of our readers have a solution as to how principled journalists and site owners can change the state of things and still remain financially viable, please let us know and we'll share your thoughts with the rest of our audience. -Ed.]
Let’s take a gander at which sites played the embargo game today, offering up essentially the same content as everyone else:
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(Ratings Average: 3.50 out of 5)
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