Legend11 on 23 September 2007
| Erik Aston said: Everyone in the world knew that Halo 3 was going to get insanely good scores including a ton of perfect scores years ago. It was basically confirmed in 2004 when the Halo 2 launch went off without a hitch. And if anyone had any doubt, it should have been erased weeks ago when Halo 3 ads started covering every major game publication from top to bottom. Videogame journalism is shady. That isn't to insult Bungie, the Halo games or most of these reviewers. Just Microsoft, who is signing these publications' checks. They obviously can't directly dictate what scores should be given, but they can and do, according to ceaseless industry rumor, restrict scores below a certain level (I'm guessing 9.5 in this case; it was 9.0 for the recent Madden launch) until after the game launches. Don't shoot the messenger. |
It was an embargo on all review scores for Halo 3. And it's not like Microsoft and EA are the only ones that do it, Nintendo, Sony, and many others do it as well with their videogames. And it's not just a videogame thing as it's also done with movies, books, and tv shows.
