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Originally posted by: mantidor
I think the question is not if the forums are crap but why are they so popular? are they really old? do they have this long history?
That has already been answered
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GAF is a great place for information, cause like Mario said, they don't actually play games. They have drones all over the internet that collectively gather and post info, gaming and otherwise(Off-Topic Thread). They also have people that have a hobby of keeping the most accurate sales data on the net for no other purpose than to be useful to the Media-Create and NPD threads.
and to add to that, lots of industry insiders post on GAF. I just posted some quotes from a Hudson Employee in the $40 game thread in the Wii section for example, and I've seen CliffyB on there plus lots of other developers such as Dennis Dyack(who also posted here at some point a long long time ago) and many others.
And since they have so many users, from all over the world, not only are they a good place to find news first, but lots of other sites actually get some of their content from there. Announcements, Screen Shots, Mag Scans, Rumors, Sales Data, and the best of all are the Photoshops. You have to check out the photoshop threads.