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Bias! Bias I say!
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Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:54:35
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EDGE online, formely Next-gen.biz.



Something hinky lately. The guys at EDGE magazine (seperate from the website) were always pretty pro-Sony and anti-Nintendo as the two companies sit on either side, Sony had the mature high tech approach EDGE mag loves. Nintendo, the casual family friendly games they dont like so much.



But the website (seperate from the website) has started to do things which make me think that they have a distinctive anti-nintendo stance.



The first rumblings were 6 months ago at NPD time. Their headline and picture painted some massive success story for PS3, despite the fact that based on figures, it was Wii that was kicking everyones ass and they barely mentioned it. The picture and tone of the article was that Sony has delivered some sort of knock out blow for the month and was the victor. Hail PS3!



Then there is their revelling in weekly japanese hardware sales, a certain vigour in their reporting. But recentely it's a little strange. They just declared Madworld a flop in the UK. here



Let me break this down. At the time of their article, it is Monday. The game came out on Friday..... (3 days before) and here in the UK Sunday is a Christian day of worship with restricted Sunday trading hours i.e the shops aint even open most of the day. A bit TOO eager to declare the game a flop.



Then they single out HOTD Overkill NPD sales with glee here, 45'000 copies sold. I dont recall them really making whole news stories about the sales of a single game, so early. Which doesn't put much in perspective. For instance Boom Blox sold 65'000 in its first month and is now close to a million sold. HOTD 2 and 3 return on Wii has sold 990'000 despite not topping charts anywhere.



They are pointing out with glee when these "mature" games dont succeed, only they are calling out the games within a miniscule initial time period, when we know that Wii games are slow burners, like Endless Ocean, again a game closing in on a million sold.



But this article is one of the worst, here. A headline front page topping article called: Has the Wii bubble burst? Their basis is pretty lame. Nintendo is increasing the price it sells Wii to retailers in the UK. Because the UK pound has dropped by 40% against the yen. And the article cites waning japanese sales, not factoring in that once again in the recent NPD, it was still outselling all (combined.)



I'm getting the impression that these guys will hit the buzzer whenever they can to point out when Wii fails.  I still love the site and check it everyday and I love the magazine. But when it comes to their sales reporting, it's getting a little annoying.




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Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:16:42
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"Will the ______ bubble burst?" is one of the most overused headlines ever.
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Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:20:17
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You can make almost anything look like crap if you only pay attention to the negative news. Evidently, Nintendo has so little bad news that it comes off seeming rather unbelievable.

If Wii Fit is still selling out over 10 months later, quite an overpriced and underperforming piece of hardware in my opinion, then I can't see how Nintendo's "bubble" has burst. How can there be a Nintendo bubble? There can be a housing bubble or stock bubble when something is overpriced based on hype and poor business practices, but the Wii is selling an actual product. Are millions of people just going to suddenly wake up one day and realize the Wii is crap and throw it out?


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Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:25:24
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I think they do it for the clicks
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Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:44:40
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"Are millions of people just going to suddenly wake up one day and realize the Wii is crap and throw it out?"

Well, that's what I did. LOL

Edited: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:01:41

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Tue, 24 Mar 2009 02:01:20
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It's more probably that they're trolling for page views.  Bashing the top dog is the easiest way to generate interest.

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Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:36:34
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Endless Ocean has almost sold a milli? Sweet!

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Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:45:40
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While I am on the subject of bias, I have to say that gamesindustry.biz has a notable anti-Sony pro Microsoft stance.

I dont think its intetional, as a website they need to generate news. Unfortunately the way they frequently do that is by letting Microsoft execs freely use the site as a soapbox to attack Sony in some form.

I can't even count the number of times on that site that I've seen the headline "Microsoft exec says Sonies suckzors"

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Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:42:46
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As Yoda says, a desperate troll for page views.  For any media outlet the easiest route to more eyeballs is to diss a popular or successful entity. (Rush Limbaugh vs. Obama).

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Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:02:30

3 days though. GFK Chart track UK - tracks the weekly sales and ends on Saturday each week. Madworld launched on Friday and by Monday the headline was Madworld flops?

I mean, dont you usually wait a few months before calling sales? Hell a couple of weeks. Madworld may very well end up being a flop but calling it a flop within 2 days of sales?

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Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:32:09
Actually Sega said they were happy with MadWorld sales.
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Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:26:11
After reading some more sales stuff I've come to the conclusion that they aren't biased, they just like to sensationalise sales news for attention. It's just a bit lame when they do it for silly things like 2 days of sales.

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