Did they have the exclusive review for Jade Empire, too?

One more notch on the toubles of video gaming reviews.

As an aside though, I don't think reviews have as much impact on sales as they do in this industry though, so constantly comparing it to the movie industry isn't always an acceptable side to stand on.

Metacritic still has it at 100 strong though...

wow this really opens up everything. Hey Gerstmann can you lighten this up.

Exclusive reviews aren't exclusive, they're attention getters.

He raises a good point. There is something ethically troubling about getting an exclusive review, as it does imply, at least partially, that somebody owes somebody something, whether that's money, a good score, or a genuinely positive outlook.

I've always had an issue with exclusive reviews as well. Most just come across as fanboyism or bribes to be honest. If it's a product meant for mass consumption an exclusive review says nothing more than "I took time to play/see/drive it first; I'm that big of a fan of this product."

I feel that gaming tolerates this because the culture of competition that's a major component of interactive entertainment. If you have the exclusive review, you can be the first guy to lay claim to finishing a game. It's kind of silly because it makes game seem like the ultimate consumable product. Just eat it and spit it back out. Where's the enjoyment and the ability to reflect on the product with a bit of hindsight?

while one should surely think about whether an exclusive first review or preview is really credible (in many cases its probably not), in case of gta IV most press voices are very positive so even if not all have a review up yet the game will probably get a rating in very high regions on most outlets, so yeah, wouldn´t worry a lot in this case.

Either way, the intro on their video review with Flashing Lights was sick!

I decided to ignore exclusive reviews after Game Informer gave Assassin's Creed a 9.5.

well, i can certainly see the problem with exclusive reviews.

however, kotaku has been sponsored by game companies NUMEROUS times.

i see EQUAL amounts of problems with that.

and who knows if rockstar paid kotaku to make 300 gta posts in a week and a half.

so, as far as ethically troubling goes, perhaps ign's exclusive review isn't the only place we should be looking, hey?

Video game reviews are as trusty as George W.Bush...
I only read them to know specific characteristics of games and not judge if its good or bad
Gamespot 7.5 for rachet the lowest on metacritic...
Gametrailers give 9.9 to GhostRecon 1
and gta4 a 9.8
"Reviers" they carry on by hype alot,some obviously have some benefactors behind them...
Cnet and zdnet are very Microsoft friendly and guess,gamespot is in their network...
etc etc

Cause IGN is the only one to give it a 10.

Lots of people gave Bioshock a 10, and I don't think that it's worthy of it, CONSPIRACY!

who would?
the simple idea of puting a price on a game review is pure evil

IGN having their embargo lifted a whole 48 hours before the rest of the news sites didn't matter much to me. I go to their site and read their articles anyways.

And if the question is, would GTA IV have gotten a lower score from IGN if their review hadn't been "exclusive?" I think this answers the question. That's a whole lot of non-exclusive 10/10.

I can't trust reviews anymore for just his reason. There' money involved somewhere, and it's obvious. So I think it's safe to say pretty much all recent reviews are bull.

I was also skeptical about the exclusive review.

But then again, everybody is giving it a very high rating. Gamespy (basically IGN?) 1up (A+), Teamxbox (10), Eurogamer (10), CVG (9.5), etc.

Honestly, reviews by EDGE are the ones I really trust now.

Another sign I'm too old for hardcore gaming: I could give a crap about review scores and arguments pertaining to their worth/credibility. It's GTA. Like cold pizza and sex, even if it's kinda bad, its still pretty good.

The only thing to do with this is to trust your media outlet.

The bottom line is that the video game press is filled to the brim with little nuances that we accept.

If we were going to be strict about the whole thing, the press would ignore things like private screenings and embargoes and operate like the press that covers conventional news. One could argue that embargoes are no more than an advertisement given that the companies get to decide when elements are revealed, but also let reporters prep for said reveals to be able cover them more thoroughly.

Exclusive reviews tie into all of this, with the game maker usually being assured of a good score (even if it's the score the media outlet would give). Add to that a precise time when the info is released, so as to generate the right amount of hype, and you can almost call it advertising.

The downside to getting rid of these practices is that outlets who would choose to cooperate with PR would always have content before those who don't. This means everyone has to play the game so as to be on the same page.

So, like I said in the beginning, it all has to do with trusting that you're getting fair coverage.

overall i think videogame journalism is 10steps behind any other journalism and compared to some movie critics and reviewers videogamers are like infants with allot of way to go...

I really feel that the best thing you can do it rent a game and make your own opinion. Granted that can be a waste of money and gaming isn't cheap as is but playing a game yourself is the best way to find out if you liek it or not. Next best resource the internet (and gamer friends), not reviews and crap like that but word of mouth. A conglomerate of people's opinions, sure you got your fanboys out there who opinions taint this but most people who take the time to write in their view of a product are honest.

Point being, I personally don't give two squats about what IGN thinks of GTA4. Neither should everyone else. At best, take into consideration IGN's opinion.

Owen you make a good point, it is very POSSIBLE that IGN kicked up the score on this one because of their "first crack" at a review and the traffic that comes with something like that. Only god and the folks at IGN and Rockstar can say.

This was bound to happen, fanboyism and money for this game.

I don't know... I think having an exclusive puts a review house more in the hot seat. Think about it, if you give something an undeserved mark and many other more respected review houses give the same game a wildly varying score then your assessment looks cheap and your weight as a reviewer diminishes. My point is that there is no free lunch or (for a more-proper analogy,) a inconsequential action in a review. Either you are proving wrong by the majority or your argument prevails by the blessing of consensus.

Game Informer's reviews suck anyways. I knew I was done with them when they gave No More Heroes a 6 and in the same issue gave Lost Planet an 8. Yeah, no.

White House press conferences are invite-only.

If President Bush doesn't like your news outlet, say good bye the press conference invitations and interviews.

Point being, this is a major issue that goes waaayyy beyond the gaming press.

Exclusive Reviews = Fail. They should not be present at all.

IGN's review was one of the better I've read. Sure it's a 10, but there's been about 7 of them so far. Including one 11/10, which was also a great review.

Certainly it can be cause for concern, but IGN is a pretty big site whether you like them or not.

I'm guessing IGN reviewed the game first and then contacted R*. GTAIV gets a 10 from IGN and R* allows the very popular game site to run the review earlier than others.

Well considering the fact they gace San Andreas a 9.9, It's perfectly feasible that this game is a 10. Maybe in two weeks Kotaku can start a poll and ask whether it was deserving of it, after we've played through it.

I think they gave a top notch review, and since other outlets who didn't have exclusive access are also giving it 10's, it most likely deserves it.

i stopped believing most reviews after the fiasco that was Lost odyssey reviews...most of them saying the load times were bad etc,when they had a pre-release copy and the retail copy had normal loading times...and it was a great game

what i find silly about the whole thing is that it isn't long before the review becomes less exclusive and other places are allowed to post their critiques. as they're often before the game is released, it's not like an exclusive review can really flavour a person's opinion of a title.
but anyway, yeah i think they're pretty dodgy. odd that say, the movie or music industry doesn't do anything similar.

I think, at least over GTA 4, that this is a moot point. I mean, really, are less people going to buy GTA 4 simply because they gave it a 10 rather than a 9.99, 9.75, or 9.17? I really don't think so.

It all leads back to that kind of grading scale for game reviews being a load of crap. To me, whether it's 8, 9, or 10, it doesn't make a bit of difference.

@SAKY: I actually remember either Team Xbox or The Official Xbox Magazine being the first to give the game a 10. It's not like major newspapers refuse to take advertising money for movies they're reviewing.

Plus, I consider Kotaku a pretty unbiased site, and if they had numbers (which, thankfully, they don't, to prevent this sort of crap), it would seem that the review would be close to a 10, if not a 10.

@Pickens: It would still sell if it was given a 1 out of 10. If was that bad then word would get around eventually and sales would plummet shortly after release. Still the first week's sales would be no different than they are now.

I can't wait to start playing the game so I don't have to read game reviews for a long time, let alone read fanboy debates.

Compared to the movie, book, or tv industry, video games are much younger. I would imagine that in the early days of the movie industry, "favors" were common as well, once it got older and became fully mainstream, those favors were lost because the large amount of coverage negated the advantage of favoritism. Eventually, video game journalism might become like today's movie reviewers - every newspaper will have one.

Also keep in mind that books, tv shows, and movies are not often a $50-a-pop venture, and the need to convince customers to part with that amount of cash requires a bigger effort.

@stevesan:

Best Comment I've seen on here. Also I think since IGN has had a ton of exclusive reviews over the past few years and this is the only one thats been a 10. Since well Soul Calibur it's not really a big deal.

I'm sure R* got some money out of the deal and IGN got some publicity. But other than that i'm not too worried about the credibility of the review or the people who wrote it. Even if people think he's a girl sometimes.

I 100% agree and take each exclusive reivew with a grain of salt. But as today has proven that 10/10 from IGN is not the only one. This might even be the highest reviewed game since Metroid Prime or Ocarina.

I don't know why a company would falsely overrate a game that they paid for an exclusive review. They're just paying to be the first to publish their review to drive traffic or ad sales; if the game is rated a 5, or F, or Rent It why would it matter to the review publisher? They would still get the traffic.

Now if the game company told the reviewing party, "Hey, give our game a 98 or better and we'll give you a 48 hour exclusive window.", that would be wrong.

What am I missing?

The argument that R* gave an exclusive to IGN on the basis of getting a higher score from IGN would hold more water if everyone else wasn't giving GTA IV 10/10 as well. But after 13 reviews for the 360 and 10 for the PS3, it's still at 100 on MetaCritic.

I'm not saying the practice isn't a questionable one, but I'm not sure there's much to be concerned about in this case. Actually my concern is in the opposite direction - people or publications who want to gain credibility by seeming to not go along with the hype and hubris, and giving it a lower score than it deserves.

I wouldn't be bothered by this if this was about a game from a developer other than R*.

Remember State of Emergency? In the dutch press, several magazines were promised a review copy of GTA: Vice City early, if they gave State of Emergency a 95% score or higher. One of them declined, and told the masses about this little secret. (The Official Playstation Magazine 2 for the Netherlands)

I haven't trusted any 'exclusive' reviews for any of Rockstars' games since then.
Once a crook, always a crook.

wen u think about, they only had the review 1 day before everyone else online and xbox magazine (?) had it before everyone else. i trust their review

Because people reading these don't give a damn about the content. They just want to see the high number, smile to themselves that their preorder was justified, and wait for the game to come out. Every hint of negativity will either be ignored or argued with.

I could never use a 0/10 rating scale as I feel like 10 indicates the game is perfect and is the example that all games should follow without any flaws. I use a A through F grade on my own blog just to keep the range broad.Most people can figure out the difference between what makes a A game and B/C or whatever game.GTA4 is not perfect and I'm not sure how any game should ever recieve a 10 if it shows any flaw,no matter the insignificance.

On the topic of exclusive reviews..
It's a slippery slope,if the publisher is using you to gain favor with the audience.Does the publisher believe by giving early treatment,a better score will come about? I don't know.

Of course,exclusive reviews draw in readers,uniques and lots of traffic..so they aren't such a bad thing.

Three words for Ben Fritz: Get over it.

Personally I trust IGN after having followed the site for nearly a decade. I heard on one of their podcasts that they usually are allowed to run exclusive reviews if the publisher deems the score high enough. That means that they review the game beforehand and come up with a score. If the publisher thinks a 5.0 out of 10 sucks then IGN has to wait until everyone's embargo lifts. I think that ethically that can be problematic, especially if the site is smaller and needs the attention. However if you've trusted a reviewer for ages (Like I trust Mr. Goldstein) then it should be fine.

I agree with this article because I remember when GI gave Mass Effect that high score about a month before it came out. I thought it was kind of shady, like why are you reviewing this game so far in advance before it comes out? I mean what if they change something? Just go to game rankings and read a really broad spectrum of opinions before shelling out 60 bucks for something that might totally blow goats.

Honestly, I doubt that the problem with exclusives is money. I'm more worried about it from an emotional standpoint.

Strange, I know. But I don't think that, say, IGN when composing the review was thinking "wow, we'll get all these hits from being two days ahead of the pack!" Maybe there was some marketing wonk who put that together, but then he's structuring the deal for a kickback or whatever have you behind the scenes anyway. Thus, nothing to do about that.

However, said game review is still human. Humans like to be treated special. It makes them happy. So it doesn't matter whom you give the exclusivity to, whether or not there's a high ranking. It's that you, the developer, have just said "hey, you're special. Don't you feel the glow of our love?"

Combine that with how journalists live for a a scoop, and you ensure your reviewer is curling up to that game with some serious afterglow. It's going to make the game look better than it is.