Here's an interesting article i came across.
http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/05/29/low-metacritic-costs-developers/
In case you are too lazy to read it, the gist is that it claims that some developers withhold part of the royalties paid to the developers if the game fails to achieve a certain Metacritic score, regardless of how many copies the game sells.
Makes it a little easier to understand why certain publishers might be willing to spent extra cash advertising casual games. If the game fails to achieve a certain score then the publishers can use the money that would have been paid to the developers as royalties for advertising. This could it turn help to generate additional sales and additional profit, without affecting the game's total buget .
It also makes me wonder which developers might be guilty of such practices.
Whatta ya think?
