mtv-multiplayer posts

After being cornered by the team at MTV's Multiplayer Blog, the good doctors at BioWare sized up their personal feelings toward the PC platform and its future with the famed RPG developer. "The PC market is vibrant ... look at the success of games like 'World of Warcraft' or 'Age of Conan.' Those are very successful games," CEO Ray Muzyka told MTV. "We're very supportive of seeing great PC titles in the market because we just think it's another sign that the market's very strong."

With the comments made to MTV and the recent PC release of Mass Effect, BioWare appears to be continuing its long-standing tradition of creating quality experiences for PC gamers. BioWare is currently developing a yet-to-be announced MMO which is expected to be discussed during E3 -- which begins on July 15.

Former GameSpot writer Alex Navarro told MTV Multiplayer an anecdote that paints an embarrassing picture of the relationship between the enthusiast gaming press and game publishers. Navarro had been assigned "a certain Wii launch title" to review. The game's publisher sent him a note, which read: "If the review is 9.0 or higher you can post immediately. Lower than 9.0, could you please hold until launch day, November 19th? Thanks."

According to Navarro, this was par for the course. And there's no doubt this sort of thing is also common with PC games. In the end, GameSpot chose to buy the game at retail rather than use a review copy provided by the publisher. Navarro gave the game a very poor review. He was unwilling to share the name of the game or the publisher, but if you're really savvy with GameSpot's content browsing features, you can narrow it down a bit using the information provided.

This kind of problem is not unique to the video game medium; it's unfortunately common for movie studios to refuse to screen films to critics until opening weekend if they fear those critics might get a little too, well ... critical.