I want to clarify: If the forum is biased, it is in no way to the extent that a few of the people here are saying. Dunno how many of 'em will admit it, but they're all wearing blue-tinted glasses. OK, not sleeping all last night is catching up to me... I won't say any more for frea of making no sense.

Why? Sony DO make defective products. ;)

In fact, that topic has become a rather civilised discussion about the reliability of different consoles, regardless of the relatively flame-bait title. I don't see why a thread should be locked when people are having a discussion in it, just because of the title.

People can make "Nintendo, the makers of defective products" threads, too, so long as there's some substance to it, and not simply "lolz, Wii = 7 million cuz dey all broke." People who were banned were banned because of how they said things, and not specifically what they said. Just before Kwaad was banned the first time, for instance, he made a page-long post about how evil Nintendo was for making a lot of games, based only on the information that Nintendo had 70 Wii games in the works... when there was already a thread about it. Hus repeatedly made posts that had no content in them aside from, literally "lol, ur stupid." Look at the Sony-bashing threads, and you'll notice that (for the most part) they may be sensationalist, but they have a legitimate logical basis, and aren't outright flames.

If my PS2/PSP/PS3/Wii/DS sh*t the bed on me, I'd make a thread about it.

The reality favors Nintendo argument seems to have become the battlecry of late, but it's a flawed one. Unless we count portables (which nobody's done for the past decade), the market overwhelmingly remains Sony's, despite Wii's leadership of about a million per territory, and Microsoft is still the next gen market leader. My personal advice would be to accept it rather than attempt to come up with a weak rationalization. Any attempt to change it would require posters actually interested in Sony/Microsoft systems. As the only person arguing in Sony's favor in a lot of threads, I can tell you that's something that there isn't any of, and it's not something that I can see as being easily changed.

Calling Nintendo kiddy should be fair game (and not just because it's true). However, I do believe that people shouldn't attack each other. I'll get sarcastic with people because I always am, but I won't start with namecalling or anything along those lines. I don't believe anyone's called me names, but I've had my share of people telling me things like I don't think before I post (for no other reason than that I disagree with them). I just shrug it off as ignorance, but some people will take it as an invitation to lash out.

So anyway, to answer the original question:

Stat bias: slightly, but not enough to remove their usefulness (the bigger problem is the lack of reliability of stats for the US and moreso others).

Forum bias: I'd say it's about 5:1 in favor of Nintendo, and that may be conservative. It's pretty clear ioi favors Nintendo as well, which could maybe be made a bit less blatant, but I don't think it really matters much one way or the other since I don't believe any administrator should either a) temper his bias or b) determines the overall tone of the forums once they become large enough.

looks at shams's avatar yep

''like there always was a negative sidekick against kwaad in every post - the last posts I saw from him didn't seem overly aggressive to me , but he still was provoced from all sides''

thank god for detox/rehab

Yep, I agree. A lot of this is cyclical.

If your team is winning, you tend to go out on forums, gloat about it, and generally be an e-thug. If your team is losing, you just... stay home.

Three years ago, forums like these would have all been in your favor, Nightstalker. Not because no one liked Nintendo, but because all the Nintendo fans didn't enjoy coming to sites and discussing how their team "lost." Now that Nintendo is doing well again, the Nintendo fans are coming out of the woodwork.

Of course, in an ideal world, there would be no "teams," no "winning," no "losing." But that's how these things tend to play out, unfortunately.

<3 to all the Sony fans on the site.

@Shane. The 'Reality favours the wii' thing holds true when you look at sales which is really what this site is about.