Well, after all that lamenting, complaining, criticizing, cursing and boycotting in the heat of The Gertsmann controversy, it's time to take a deep breath and cool down. Let the dust settle and look again at the horizon that we call GameSpot.

There is NO doubt in me, that GS is not the same site that I used to know. Something has changed. I'm afraid that this change is caused by the ability of game publishers to pressure game reviewers for a favorable score/review.

The publishers need to get good publicity for their games. This allows them to lure a determined number of people into buying their products. The more people buy, the better. But things get really ugly when a publisher doesn't get a high positive response from the consumers, in other words: low sales.

Today's Next-Gen (or should I say Today's Gen?) has made sure that development cost is almost as high as making a first rate movie. Almost real life graphics, immersive gameplay and high quality sound comes with a steep price. All this contributes in an obligation for the publishers to be able to sell above a minimum quantity, in order to cover their development cost and gain a decent profit (for example, take a look at Konami's MGS4).

With that kind of responsibility (to make decent money), publishers CAN NOT afford BAD/NEGATIVE publicity. And low scores or bad reviews are BAD publicity for them. So it's understandable when they are trying to manipulate the reviews just to obtain good publicity.

BUT that doesn't mean WE gamers have to tolerate such acts of CORRUPTION. We have to look and find objective reviews, try demos, rent or borrow BEFORE buying.
WE must MAKE THEM UNDERSTAND, that if they make lame, broken and horrible games, no matter what score/review they have, they can shove them into their noses, because WE WON'T BUY THEM.