Nintendo Partners with IGN = Collusion?

[Narcolepsy]

First, click this link and read about Nintendo's new partnership with IGN.
This immediately made me suspcious; one of IGN's many functions is to review games, Nintendo games in particular. How can they fulfill this function while in a business partnership with the company that they review?

BIZ: Some would argue that IGN's partnering with Nintendo presents a conflict of interest for editorial. What do you say to that?

DT: IGN Entertainment is involved in the videogame industry in many ways. Although gamers best know us for our editorial content and services, we have other areas of business that we are involved in -- one being our publisher services group that creates amazing In Game Technology Solutions for publishers. Most online gamers will recognize this by the "powered by GameSpy" brand that they see on the back of their online games. In fact our technology is currently in over 300 games on both the console and PC. What is significant is that we are now using our technology for the first time on a handheld device.

Conspiracy theories are nothing new though - what is new is the seemingly supressed knowledge of a recent Gamespy (they are owned by IGN) review of Donkey Konga 2. The reviewer gave the game 1.5 stars, but upon publication, it magically gained another 1.5 stars and a few glowing remarks. The reviewer was outraged:
Here's the link.

We all know that corruption such as this probably happens every day without our knowledge. But could these two recent developments be related?

 

[Reginald]

That first link was a stonking read:

The page cannot be displayed
There is a problem with the page you are trying to reach and it cannot be displayed.

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Please try the following:

Open the biz.gamedaily.com home page, and then look for links to the information you want.
Click the Refresh button, or try again later.

HTTP Error 500-13 - Server too busy
Internet Information Services

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Technical Information (for support personnel)


Background:
The request cannot be processed at this time. The amount of traffic exceeds the Web site's configured capacity.


More information:
Microsoft Support

 

[Narcolepsy]

That first link was a stonking read:

That's odd. It works fine for me. The error implies overwhelming traffic, so try it again later.

 

[Pressure]

That first link was a stonking read:

The link works fine for me also.

 

[Direwolf]

I think Tycho from PA said it best:

Let me tell you about a friend of mine.

He's written all sorts of reviews for all kinds of places. He's had reviews completely rewritten that still retain his byline. And not just rewritten, I mean to say that the purpose of his original text was inverted. In another case, the review was not modified, but the score was. The numerical value he had given it was higher than the score the publication had awarded Warcraft III, so clearly that dog wouldn't hunt.

It's not some evil force at work: there are review voices, and there is an overarching editorial voice that publications online and off try to maintain. It's their job to make sure that a score does not occur in vacuum, but fits flush in the edifice of their overall perspective. For example, IGN tends to score games a little higher and Gamespot tends to score them a bit lower. I accept that I live in a complicated world where a matrix of factors - factors which sometimes include the raw machinations of business - are distilled into some value. It doesn't keep me up at night. I just keep it in mind.