I can pretty much guarantee you that Kotaku doesnt post every piece of gaming related advertising they get throught their mailbox. Why should Kotaku support a company with millions of dollars to put into advertising for silly hyping stuff like this, instead of supporting the little guy actually making something interesting?

I would much rather that all the dollars that went into hyping mediocre games like bioshock (interesting setting, shite gameplay) went into making the game better, but if people insist on perpetuating the hype of the gaming industry, we're just going to see more and more dollars going into marketing and less money going into game development.

Would it be fair to say that most of the titles that sell well today are boring from a core gamers perspective? If iteration after iteration of the same old shit is want you want, go for it!

It seems to me these days that the most media just happily tows the corporate line, a la Kotaku posting marketing material that comes through their mailbox.

I dunno, I'm deeply cynical this kind of stuff, probably more than I should be, but I'm interested to know why people like the Kotaku crew post ads as news.

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Naaah, that'd just be zany.

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Look, I'm sure that's the case, but you haven't addressed my point at all. I can't get my head around why there are so many marketing promotions that get posted on this website.

It seems most games these days get judged on the content of their marketing, rather than actual game content itself. Its normal to spend way more time reading marketing material for a game than actually playing the game itself.

Think about your relationship with a game. You hear about it a year or so before it comes out. Then you spend the next year reading about it and anticipating the game. Then you get it, play it for a week and discard it, already distracted by the marketing campaigns for the sequels. I don't know about you, but that just seems really wrong to me.

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For example, movies. It's not unheard of to start the hype train for a 90-120 minute movie many years before it comes out. Ghostbusters 3, Freddy vs. Jason, Doom, amongst many others, were hyped by industry folks for a ridiculously long time. Then the film comes out, people see it, and they start reading about the next film that tickles their fancy. That's just how it works, and it's the exact same thing with games.

The people that judge a game based on how often it's logo has been piledriven into their faces are legion in number. It's because of them that marketing is as aggressive as it is. Unfortunately, they're here to stay, and are a permanent fixture in the community. You can't so much as utter a game's name without being guilty of "marketing" it. In that way, we're all feeding the problem, and are powerless to stop.

I wouldn't call posts like this "promotions", though. It's no more than a "Hey, look at how cool this thing is" statement on a grand scale. If you don't like BioShock, then Stephen showing off his record won't change that. If you do, then you're already salivating for the sequel, and so you'd likely be interested in knowing that a sample of the soundtrack is out there.

(the first couple of paragraphs in this post sound like the ramblings of a very tired man, so if they don't make any sense, just focus on the last paragraph, as that's where I make my point.)

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Nah, it makes perfect sense. Thanks for the well considered reply. People arent going to sink money into a big game development budget without the appropriate marketing budget to back it up. I guess I just grew up with a much lower profile gaming industry, I have to get used to things changing. After all, the big blockbusters of the movie industry havent stopped innovation and independent film.

but yeah, I've got a big system shock 2 shaped chip on shoulder :P

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But yeah, I get what you mean. I remember when most of my gaming news came from the nag screens that pop up after you exit a shareware game in DOS.

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They weren't joking when they said GTA4 had failed to meet sales expectations.

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"Hey mom, can I buy this game Grand Theft Auto?"

mom:"Why of course, it's made by Disney my little six year old."

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@crabperson: This is for GTA4 right?

Still this doesn't answer why Take-Two is losing money...What franchise did they make that flopped? I mean even if it flopped, couldn't GTA4's huge sales at retail cover that?

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It had no big releases this quarter. GTA4 was launched a long time ago and sales have trickled down to almost nothing, but it still has all the expenses of producing a GTA4 like game (whatever it is they may be working on now).

That's the nature of game development -- you make a ton in a single quarter and go back to losing money for a few years until your next big release. That's why publishers have developers by the balls, because developers finance all that money lost in between profits and are a buffer in case your next big release isn't quite as big as you'd hoped.

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What game did they release after GTA4 that kind of flopped?

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Still, any profit is good profit, right?!

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