Promising Review

This reviews got me convinced. I'm going to reserve my copy.
Basically it states Codies 10 - Electronic ****ers (Arts) 0
FIFA just got owned



http://217.158.191.134/pma/19361

By the way- how do all these online review websites make a profit? There are advertisements but compared with all the content I don't see how they make enough cash. Take http://www.msxbox-world.com/ for example. How many people do you think work on it?

I can't just accept things as they are. I need to know the workings. Obsessional curiousity I guess.

[Rubbergenius]

Now this is a question that I'd know about as I've worked with websites for years. Apologies for the long ramble to follow!

With something like Total Games (who did the great review for England Football) then that's just the online version of Play magazine - so the site is produced by the same people (that review will be in Play magazine this month as well). No problem there (same goes for CVG and Total Video Games for example - they're all backed by big name magazine publishers).

Games Domain is slightly different as they don't have an offline magazine but then they've got Yahoo backing them so no worries. Same goes for Gamesradar (MSN).

With the independent websites such as Eurogamer, MSXbox World, Spong and the like the money isn't there as much. They have to rely on either the good word of mouth from gamers creating a good reputation with the games companies (and thus the games companies are happy to deal with them for advertising). But then that can be a problem if the same website you're advertising with gives one of your products a really bad review (Eurogamer upset us when they gave Club Football 3/10 for example).

There's also the affiliate route - that why a lot of them have advertising for Amazon or Play.com - as they get a cut of the money made from people that go via that advert to buy a game (as long as they buy the game of course!). We have the same kind of thing with our affiliate scheme.

They can also sell their content to other sites (for example The Register IT news site takes articles from the Eurogamer sister site GamesIndustry.biz) or they do other work away from the site for corporate clients - Eurogamer (another 'for example') worked on some of the technology for the online capabilities for some recent games.

Of course, there's always the route that they just don't make any money and survive on the writers' passions for games - emailing companies such as us, asking us to send them through press releases and news (which, of course, we're more than happy to do) and games to review (it depends on the site with that - obviously we can't send them out to all sites as it costs too much and it's also got to be weighed against the how many people would actually see that review).

It's a complex world for games review/news sites, that's for sure, but the good ones survive and we have very many good contacts with them. Obviously we don't pay any of them for a favourable reviews (that's just a myth I far as I'm aware) but as long as it's an honest review we continue to work well with them.

Hope this answers your question!

/my ramble for the evening...

That certainly answers my question. I regret wasting £5.99 on the Official Xbox Magazine. I bought it because it offered 9 playable demos but they were so dismal and easy that I was bored in ten minutes. When I played the new TOCA Race Driver 2 demo for the PC (which I plan to buy for Xbox) I was very impressed. The graphics wern't much better than the previous Race Driver but the gameplay and realism were greatly improved. I'm very fussy about which games I like so I like to buy games from developers and publishers with good reputations like Codemasters, Climax, THQ, Bizzare Creations (all British);not Electronic Arts who don't give a **** about gamers and just want more $$$. I'm also a gamer with strong principles to the extent that I'm not going to buy another game made by DICE just because they used an American flag to represent the English version of their website. No wonder so many Swedes kill themselves. Anyway, I'll stick to the online review websites from now on and save my money for the games.

[Rubbergenius]

I certainly would give up on magazines - but that's my opinion of course and not the view of Codemasters.

The thing in the magazine's favour - they get the pick of the reviews though. Most magazine reviews come out before the game has been released, most websites reviews are afterwards. So that has to be weighed up as well.

For a good cross-section of reviews from magazines and websites, bookmark Games Rankings (http://www.gamesrankings.com) as they list nearly all games. Very handy before making a purchase...

I'll add it to my favourites

Codies 10 - Electronic ****ers (Arts) 0

I'm very fussy about which games I like so I like to buy games from developers and publishers with good reputations like Codemasters, Climax, THQ, Bizzare Creations (all British);not Electronic Arts who don't give a **** about gamers and just want more $$$.

Does everyone here hate EA?
I have a lot of EA sports games although EA ruined the james bond series, surely some people just want a decent footie game regardless of where its from.

[Rubbergenius]

I don't hate them - I've met quite a few of the EA people and they are nice friendly types.

It's just EA have the reputation, especially with the FIFA, of releasing the game year on year and it not progressing much. It's all about how much money they can throw at it.

However, they sold over a million copies of FIFA in the UK alone last year so they must be getting something right!

I don't mind the updates really, its a bit like the championship manager series. If they were to make a completely new game with a new engine, then it would take them more than 6 months which UEFA 2004 has.

It's the fact that EA allow noobs to spam their servers in the Command and Conquer series with bots and don't do a single thing about cheaters that really annoys me. Why buy a game from a company that can't even control teenage hackers.