Yep; sadly, we've had rumblings of this sort from Gamespot for years. Anyone else remember the Shenmue debacle? GS writer Frank Provo originally gave Shenmue a 6.8 - much less than other review sites did - and for good reason. Shenmue, while being a revolutionary game, had a ton of flaws that most reviewers overlooked.
Well, Sega - who ironically had a lot of advertising on the site - "urged" Gamespot to "re-evaluate" the game. Unlike Gerstmann, Provo caved, and ended up bumping the score up a whole point. His reasoning, straight from the review: "the original score overlooked certain significant features that, after consideration, invalidated the original score that the game received. GameSpot regrets the error."
Yeah, I'm sure.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were other, unpublicized incidents of this happening as well.
"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."
-Sean Malstrom
