GamePro Review = Bribery Scandal

[[M]artin]

There is a huge buzz circulating on the Internet now about the controversial review of the popular real-time strategy game Supreme Commander written by GamePro's Australia division. Most reviews (as seen on ranking sites like GameRankings.com and MetaCritic.com) have been very positive about Supreme Commander, with reviews averaging around 80% - 90%.

GamePro Australia, however, gave Supreme Commander a score of 5 / 10 (50%), stating that the game was, "virtually unplayable" and that Supreme Commander represented the "saddest moment in the history of the [RTS] genre." The review was so controversial that GameRankings.com and MetaCritic.com have pulled the score from their respective sites. Now, while the review is accurate in that SC does have very high system requirements, we had no real issues with the shift key or the frame rate in general when playing on a relatively new system (Dual Core Intel, 1GB RAM, 7800GTX).

Gas Powered Games, developers of Supreme Commander, were understandably upset about the review, as it was one of the first Supreme Commander reviews to appear, and may have swayed some fans from purchasing the game.

Apparently, although this has not been confirmed as of yet, the controversy only became worse when rumors of a bribe began to surface. Electronic Arts, in competition with Gas Powered Games (EA's own RTS, Command & Conquer 3, ships near the end of March), supposedly offered a large sum of money to Game Pro Australia in exchange for the low review score of Supreme Commander.

There are now more rumors that GamePro Australia is being shut down, although this also is not yet confirmed.

If rumors of a bribe are indeed true, this represents an all-time low, not just for Electronic Arts and GamePro, but perhaps for the video game industry as a whole. Who knows if this has happened before.

Via Gameworld Network

 

[FAST6191]

Ooh bribery, maybe not quite as blatant but simiilar (normally ad based) things have happened in the past.

But for those oft useless averaging sites to pull the reviews it must be something special.

 

[fischju_original]

thats why you always use gamerankings.com

 

[Costello]

OMG I bet divineo is behind it !!!1

 

[jumpman17]

SC runs fine on my PC and it's an absolute blast to play.

 

[Golin]

SC runs fine on my PC and it's an absolute blast to play.

What kind of PC do you have? I heard SC even gives high-end PCs a run for its money. I have a 3.4Ghz P4, 1GB Memory, Mobility Radeon X600 and I know I can't run SC because running CoH will cause my notebook PC to overheat and shut down.

 

[jumpman17]

I have a nVidia GeForce 6600 as my video card. I'm not sure what everything else is because my dad takes care of all that stuff, I just update the video card.

Sure I can't run the game on super full graphics, but knocking the stuff down to about 40% graphic capabilities seems to run fine.

 

[Rayder]

This reminds me of the GamePro preview/review of the old Sega 32X game Metal Head.

In the previews, they said it NEVER gets repetitive or boring. Then, when the review came out they said it is very repetitive and boring. After that I never trusted GamePro again.

That was how many years ago now?

Apparently they are still pulling that crap.

 

[Gaisuto]

I want to know is if EA's pulled this shit before, and of all the people, why the Australian division? Less chance of getting noticed?

 

[nintendofreak]

BF2142

now this?

i wouldnt doubt it.