I completely agree with Grey Ninja- unless you're part of the industry, whether that be actually making games or playing them a lot, you shoudln't be reporting about videogames. It's so much different than any other industry you HAVE to be apart of it to really be accurate, but apparently that's not obvious to most publications who just want to increase their readership of teenage boys, since that demographic seems to be the most popular advertising wise. I've heard so many spellings of doom for Nintendo I've given up on reading any videogame publicatuion except for a select few internet sites and the occasional EGM. Well said, Grey Ninja. I also agree with what Omen said above me.
"Robert J. Bach is clearly a (put any expletive here), but that statement did not hurt the article at all."
It hurts the entire integrity of the article when you get Nintendo's competitor to comment on Nintendo- it shows that the author of the article had a goal in mind, which is to convince the reader that Nintendo is failing, so they used a quote from Microsoft to prove that point.
"Even an average gamer would not be effected by this statement as he or she will know Bach just said that statement seeing as how his company(Microsoft) and Nintendo are enemies. And it especially did not have an effect on the ending."
No, you're just good at figuring out when the author's being completely biased. While you are able to recognize that a comment on Nintendo's future from Microsoft holds no water whatsoever, the average reader would NOT. Microsoft is seen as an authority in electronics, so whatever they say must be true!
And why are you talking about ending, as if we were reading a story book? This is an article, which has an aim from the beginning of the article and tries to prove a point the whole way through- think of it rather as building project rather than a winding path through a story. Articles don't have plot twists and they don't have endings in the sense you're trying to convey.