I think for these games it's just a matter of being set in their ways and unsure of what impact changing things would have.
Publishers have always used journalists to generate "press" for their games by allowing them to post reports about them. It comes from a time before social media. But even with social media I think having every video game website on the internet writing about your game is better than just posting a trailer to YouTube and then tweeting about it.
How so? I guess it does create 'hype' if the impressions are positive.
I can tell you why we do it. The show floor is way too noisy and distracting (people stopping by to say hi, people waiting in line behind you, etc.). Headphones don't provide the best sound environment over a dedicated room/theater with good surround sound. So for us, it's about letting the person be focused on and immersed in the game, and focused on their experience with it, rather than compete with the thousands of other distractions and noises of the show floor.
I can only speak for our games though.
Sounds reasonable, though is this for anyone to join or just journalists? I meant specifically journalist only previews.
don't the journalists have to send the publisher/developer their written previews before publishing the story?
For things like E3 demo impressions, I don't imagine so.
Because the Neogaf Vocal Minority Collective shit themselves instantaneously and activate Armchair Dev Mode at footage that is nowhere near completion. Who then proceed to mouth off about the game to any poor sod who might even mention the games title.
Just not worth it.
T..thanks a lot NeoGAF (._. )
You think it's a good idea to show incomplete, possibly buggy, rough gameplay to such a hyper critical community?
If gamers on the internet weren't generally a pack of rabid animals, maybe such demos wouldn't exist, but devs have found that they need to do things that way to avoid having their game trash talked to oblivion.
Haha well I guess so, but again this is why I included The Phantom Pain example in the OP and not just the Bloodborn example, since as far as I've read no one has been stating that TPP demo had any technical issues, so it wasn't for that reason.
Have you never seen people pick over alpha footage as though its a finished product on forums?
Sadly, but what does this change in the end? If they keep showing off improved footage up until a game is released, will the initial technically inferior impressions have cause irreversible damage?
To create hype. People get far more excited about what could be, rather than knowing what is.
Maybe I'm the odd man out then. Reading all these impressions, my thoughts are "I don't care about this person's opinion just show me pls" rather than any hype building.