I want an early leak. I'm not a filthy pirate: I have three copies of the LE preordered (one to use, one to collect, and one to give as a gift) and paid off via Amazon gift card back when they were in stock. But it's really not fair when certain teenage webmasters and their WordPress blogs are playing three weeks before everyone else. I've spent at least $5,000 on Nintendo products over the years and the dinky Club Nintendo prizes don't even begin to do their loyal customers justice. Nintendo needs to stamp out the practice of handing out early review copies like free candy and replace them with demos that everyone has equal access to.
I hope you are not referring to Zelda Informer in saying this. I can assure you we aren't teenagers running amuck with a "Wordpress" blog. We attend E3 annually, including personal invites to teh Nintendo Conference every year. We arguably had the best Nintendo coverage for that event on the entire internet. Fuck it, we DID have the best. It's not even debatable. We have had the best Skyward Sword coverage that I have seen, and we still continue to deliver on our Nintendo coverage every day.
We get over 25,000 unique hits a day, with just over 60,000 pageviews. We earn every bit of our Press Copy. We spend every single day convincing people that Nintendo is awesome, or criticising for the betterment of the future. You have spent over 5,000 dollars - I have spent just that this year supporting Nintendo. You have the console and the games (Nintendo never gives every place every game), hardware to do coverage properly, airfare to attend related events. What pisses me off is that everyday fans, like yourself, think you are entitled to something because you are a consumer.
Nintendo doesn't hand out press copies like they are candy. You have to have a certain threshold for viewership. That viewership, generally, is EARNED. You don't get people viewing your site for the hell of it. The notion that it's all ran by teenagers with wordpress is laughable, and that extends beyond my site.
Zelda Informer, as an example, is owned by me. I'm 25. The other co-owner is 23. Zelda Dungeon is owned by a 24 year old. ZU is owned by a 24 year old. GoNintendo is owned by like... 28? I can't remember, but Kevin is older than I am. Most of every single site that gets press copies is owned by adults. While I can't speak for our competitors, our staff's average age is 21. We do not have a single employee under the age of 18. So before opening your mouth in rage about how these sites get press copies, you may want to understand the business side of things.
When you are not only purchasing everything Nintendo, but investing thousands upon thousands of doallrs into your site every year just to ensure it stays online and is competitive in the market, then you can come back to me about be rewarded every now and then with a Press Copy.
I do agree Nintendo needs to release Demos, but to think the Wii can even remotely do such things is laughable. It doesn't even have enough internal storage to support the demo for Skyward Sword, and Nintendo does not have a system in place on the Wii to distribute such a demo. So, stop bitching about something (demos) that Nintendo's system hasn't been able to do for 5 years, and complaining that sites that have earned the right to have press copies are getting them, and start worrying about Nintendo being able to provide Demos on the 3DS and Wii U, since that is the future. Trust me: bigdaddy.wordpress.com is not getting a press copy.
I apologize for further derailing the thread. On the bright side, I am hearing through the grapevine that there may be a legit ISO out there right now. I'll get back to you if I hear more.
