Final Fantasy XIII will release in North America and Europe in two months, but don’t expect quotations from this straight-outta-leftfield review from a Hong Kong-based magazine to make an appearance on the box. Awarding the game a 4 out of 10, the review in question has had fanboys on the ‘net gnashing and wailing, a sound I shall never grow tired of hearing.

Anyhow, here’s the mag’s breakdown of a game that Japanese gaming publication Famitsu awarded a 39/40:

Scenario: 2.0 — “An epic tear jerker”
System: 1.0 — “Such a crude system barely warrants being called an RPG at all.”
Graphics: 9.0 — “Full marks here.”
Sound: 7.0 — “Mostly quality.”
Enthusiasm: 1.0 — “As if you could play this for 100 hours! I could put up with 8.”
Total: 4.0 — “To think it got this bad…”

The write-up concludes by calling Final Fantasy XIII the “biggest swindle in gaming history” and “the biggest joke of 2009.” There is a disclaimer to this, however: the magazine admits that the review is written by a “complete non-gamer,” which … explains things somewhat.

[Via Kombo]

Magazine: Final Fantasy XIII “the biggest swindle in gaming history” is a post from: The Inquisitr

The survey underlined the importance of online information in driving purchase decisions while revealing the power of the 9% of web users who produce 80% of all user-generated content.

Here are some survey insights about the Internet’s influence:

• The web is the #2 resource for customer support information, after user manuals. It ranks ahead of calling the manufacturer or asking a dealer.
• Website categories that get the most daily usage are search, social communities like MySpace and Facebook, general news websites like CNN.com and NYTimes.com, and online banking.
• The websites that Americans value most are (in order), Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Facebook.
• Young people (age 22 and under) are much noisier online than their elders. They account for about half of all the content and comments posted online.
• Facebook appears to be ahead of MySpace in terms of number of users in the US, and perceived value of the site.
• Despite the publicity, the community sites SecondLife and Twitter reach only a few percent of US Internet users.

[Download the full report]

Word of mouth tops online reviews as purchase influencer, survey finds is a post from: The Inquisitr