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madskillz on 18 October 2009
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yo_john117 said:
madskillz said:
ajaghvajagh said:
Doesn't this apply to every game that gets played before the release date?

No. You have journalist, bloggers, game testers, devs, their friends who have access to early copies. As stated, I have Lips 2 and Forza 3 - and had ODST, Beatles: Rock Band, Godfather 2, Halo Wars (a month out) and Halo 3 before release. You can also see the game listed on profiles (before release) and you can see achievements, but you can't see what they unlocked.

I have been on LIVE for 5 years and have been getting early stuff for the past 3-4 years. I have never, ever gotten an e-mail like that.

Just a question buy how do you get so many games early?  Do you know someone that knows someone?

I'm a journalist and blog at the Houston Chronicle, the 7th biggest paper in the country. I started getting early stuff from MS back when I was in New Mexico. I asked them to give us early copies so we could have a review in place before the game releases. And after a while, they sent me games early. It depends on the tier you are in - you could be a blog that gets a few million hits and they'll send you the game early. If you are a popular video game mag, you'll likely have a couple debug kits - consoles that will play early versions of the game that won't play on regular consoles. Plus, since their leadtime from story to print is large, they get first dibs on early games. Wonder why Game Informer has video game reviews of games that aren't released yet? That's how they do it.

With newspapers, the turnaround time is much, much shorter, so they will dispatch games a week or two before the game releases - sometimes. I do get games the day of release, and sometimes we get games just because. I got flooded with all sorts of games after my Beatles: Rock Band review ran in print (in Houston and San Antonio) and online.

Do I know folks in the industry? Yeah - I know a few - but in the end, if you have proven yourself to be a good reviewer who does an outstanding job, you request a game, you'll get it.

And your achievements do show up online, but most times, it shows up as the game (Like I have Forza 3 achievements) but you can't tell what achievements have been unlocked. And yes, MS knows if it's a pirated copy of the game or not, especially if you play it early. Forza 3 doesn't drop until Oct. 27th, so if you aren't on a safe list, and the code you are playing on was flagged as pirated, good luck with that.