What really gets me is when I pop over to say IGN to look in every once in a while their is always a "Top This" List but Where's the reviews, previews, etc. I know stuff is going on. We all like to speculate but, what about whats already coming that I might not see? Does anyone else think its Ironic at times that Newscast and RFN give me more information about games in general then I normally gleam from looking around?
No, it's not ironic at all. In fact, I'd be surprised if that wasn't the case. As Neal alluded to, sites like IGN are a
business. They exist to make money from ad revenue generated by hits to pages featuring content that interests the site's readership. If there are no hits, there's no ad revenue and people get laid off, as we've seen on sites like 1up. IGN's readership is likely extremely core-centric, and there are no games currently in Nintendo's North American upcoming Wii games list that are core-centric outside of really Zelda Skyward Sword and the odd game here and there. The Wii's casual audience almost by definition doesn't visit sites like IGN and whatnot, so there's no point in covering Wii Shovelware in articles that cost money to fund and don't generate hits. We already know from Radio Free Nintendo that Nintendo and 3rd parties don't tend to provide review copies of WiiWare and Virtual Console titles, so if a site wants to cover a particular game the site or reviewer must shell out the cash for it themselves. So what is there to talk about on Wii right now that the IGN readership will click on and read to generate the ad revenue that pays for the site? That's right: "Top X" lists and editorials either speculating about the next Nintendo console or criticizing things Nintendo has done this generation that has
lead to there being nothing alternative to talk about on the IGN Wii Channel. Hell, I'll bet if we didn't have the 3DS right now, we wouldn't still have an IGN Nintendo podcast because there's simply nothing to talk about that the IGN readership
cares about.
Sites like Nintendo World Report have things a little easier since, given that they do not pay their writers, they only have to generate enough ad revenue to pay for the site's server bills and the odd expenditure every now and then. Being enthusiast sites, the writers tend to be more interested in content on the Wii than on most sites, and are thus more likely to shell out their own money to pick up assorted WiiWare and Virtual Console titles for review that would have otherwise flown under the radar. Also due to being a Nintendo-centric enthusiast site, the readership tends to be more interested in such stories (it's not like there's much else to talk about) so they generate more hits than they would otherwise, funding the site and removing as much of a need for "controversial" articles like "Top X" lists. There's even enough concentrated Nintendo interest here to generate hits (even ironic ones) to support reviewing casual shovelware from time to time. The downside, of course, is that sites like NWR don't generate enough revenue to
pay their writers, and we've seen the site lose writers in the past due to this (hey, we're all trying to make a living).
People who work for paid sites aren't going to be familiar with the odd obscure
good game on the Wii and WiiWare because many times their sites have no reason to cover them. They don't generate hits, and there's such a deserved negative stigma around them that most writers probably don't feel the need to spend their own money on them unless there's strong Word-of-Mouth appeal to them (as was the case with Fluidity). By contrast, games like an L.A. Noire or Portal 2 generate huge numbers of hits, appeal strongly to core-centric gamers and writers, and are widely regarded to be high-quality, so they are more widely known.
Topic: Episode 243: Talk Talk Talkpy (Read 21164 times)
