TOYBOXX

The initial response after the release of Homefront was well received, if not mixed, despite it's lackluster presentation. Upon the release of the game, however, THQ's financial stock began to tumble regardless of the growing sales and word of mouth circulation. Sadly, after that month ended, sales fell below expectations which never recovered. I believe it attributed to poor reviews and the announcements of Call of Duty: Black Ops First Strike map pack , and Battlefield 3 at that time.   
 
In attempts to appease the shareholders, THQ announced that they've sold 2 million units, when in fact they've only sold 1 million.                     
 
Ultimately, what did them in was the expensive marketing campaign for Homefront. THQ blindly spent too much time and money with the advertising than anything else in hopes to draw in sales and compete with the other big budget shooters instead of being it's own entity. A problem we're still seeing within the gaming industry today. They bit off more than they can chew, thus, the closing of Kaos Studios. 

It looks like their taking Scribblenauts to the extreme. Personally, it looks like shit.

I've always hated live blogs. Personally, I'd prefer a pre-show via video format. As of right now I'm watching Michael Pachter chat at Gametrailers.com.

Thanks, Giantbomb, for the heads up! 

There is no denying that Sony is boned here. And to protect them like a fanboy won't help anyone's case either so don't bother. I'm not sure if it was incompetence, or sheer arrogance, that prevented Sony from protecting itself and it's customers. I'd like to think that they didn't know what they were doing. But if that was the case then why are they in the online business in the first place? 

Wow! Patrick has been everywhere in the past 5 years! From MTV, 1UP, G4tv.com, EGMi, and now Giantbomb?! All I can say is: Welcome to the Giantbomb team, Patrick!
Personally, I think the video game industry has been full of shit for the past few years now. And there's no signs of stopping the PR vomit that is plaguing our hobby. I'm tired of hyperbole dictating the sales of games through spin from the other gaming news sites, or the lack of detail of upcoming games. Briefly touching on a title of an upcoming game that is scheduled to come out on a later date isn't considered reporting. 

What we want, as gamers, is a "no-bullshit-assessment" of what is coming out without the fluff, and without personal spin or opinions. Just give it to us straight! The integrity of reviews, on the other hand, have especially been destroyed because of hyperbole. A good example of that is Homefront. The game sucked, and everyone knows it, thus the high return rate of the game itself. But for whatever reason, (most likely a financial decision) the other gaming sites declared it a decent game and gave it a good score, ultimately defeating the purpose of reviews. 

As for improvements of Giantbomb, I would like to see a video weekly wrap-up, flourished with a release date schedule graphic in the back-ground, detailing what game(s) will be coming out for the next week or so throughout the year. 

The content from Giantbomb, both past and present, is reliable reporting and fun to watch. The opinions, or what have you, is left on the podcasts - where it should be. 

Keep on keeping on, Giantbomb! We love you. 

If EA plans on eliminating the game manuals, then its only a matter of time before the game packaging will become obsolete. It all leads to a better, more cheaper, download only distribution that will alleviate the financial burden on everyone.  And let's face it, with mandatory tutorials during the first few hours of a game teaching the controls and the overall mechanics of the game world to the player, and how easily accessible the manuals themselves are through the pause menu; how many people actually read the physical copy of the manual?  
 
Personally, I'm tired of paying top dollar for games that are below average in terms of quality and content (Homefront quickly comes to mind). If it means that the industry is heading towards a cloud based distribution that will be cheaper for developers and publishers to create games, then so be it. After all those savings will trickle down onto us the consumer.

It's clear that Activision is relying solely on the console market to make the most money through the Call of Duty franchise, which isn't good. My fear is that they'll run the series to the ground, as they did with the Guitar Hero franchise, by over saturating the market with too many COD games.   

Here is a prime example of the problems we're seeing within the gaming media of today. Before Killzone 3 is even released, let alone finished, reviews are popping up all over the internets giving they're stamp of approval, or disapproval, of the over-all play experience. This is where integrity is lost and the legitimacy of reviews have fallen by the wayside.  How can we trust that the review is any good when the product in question is still being overlooked by the beta testers and the Q/A team? After all, just like with game reviews, an online multiplayer experience, particularly within the shooter genre, makes-or-breaks game sales. So in essence, with today's economy and the price of games that we have on the market, we're relying heavily on the trust of these reviewers to give us informative information to see if a game is worth purchasing or not. But, as I've stated before, how can the reviews be trusted when the game is still being scrutinized, analyzed, and corrected by both the beta testers and Guerrilla Games' in-house Q/A team?