| mike_intellivision said: But this can backfire in the video game world. Nintendo evidently did not give "Game Informer" permission to talk about some Wii features/games prior to its release. The magazine has not been kind to the console since. |
It depends what the deal with the list is. If it's "we don't want to give our competitors any ideas of our strategy" then, yes, it makes perfect sense. If it's "we don't want people to know things about our product because they're negative," then that's obviously bad.
But if a reviewer punishes a company for attaching strings, that's just petty and unprofessional, and I would never read a magazine like that.
Well, consider a case where top reviewers all formed a union where they'd have to accept the set of restrictions together or none of them could review the game. That would keep the restrictions reasonable, and the reviewers would have no incentive to give a better review for earlier access.
An example of an unreasonable restriction would be, say, not allowing you to talk about the length and types of cut scenes, as this could in no way spoil the game, but may be perceived as undesirable to many gamers.
