Wow TouchArcade is now sponsored by by ng:moco. Congrats to Blake and Arn for turning this Blog like forum to a full fledged review site.
Of course this could raise the critisism of "To what degree can we trust a TouchArcade review of any of the Ngmoco games (or any of it's competitors' games!) any more" but I simply choose to not think like that. As long as the financial and creative part of the website keep seperated, I'm all for it. Especially when it comes with such cool site layouts.
Well, and I've even seen sites like Gizmodo have an article including a Vista bashing, but you look and the whole blog has been redesigned to advertise Microsoft. I really didn't even think of this until you mentioned it.
it's a valid concern. There will always be these questions for a site that's makes money off of advertisements. We felt rather comfortable allowing Ngmoco do such an ad for Rolando as it was a highly anticipated title, and wouldn't necessarily allow any advertiser to have such a massive campaign. But I do understand that some people could question motives. I guess you'll just have to trust us for now. (And fortunately, Rolando looks like a solid title. ) arn
I trust the objectivity of a site like TouchArcade. One of the weird things I do is click around when I'm reading text on my laptop (usually I select the line I'm reading). This way, I discovered that clicking anywhere on the sidebar (which looks like it's just the background of the website), will load the Rolando product page. Wow, that's a strong part of the advertisement!
Well, at least TouchArcade is secured financially in this crazy economic time. We won't have to worry about TouchArcade going down. If that happens we would have to 'hang around' elsewhere for our daily doses of iphone games/apps news and reviews. Before, I frequents TouchArcade, the only way I knew about new games is by searching via iTunes everyday. Now, I just check out TouchArcade and the forum for latest iphone titbits. Hope, TouchArcade keep up the good work. Congrats.
Its good stuff having the sponsor, I've found many an app through this site, and the bigger it gets can only be a good thing in IMHO, however I dont want to whine but the full screen click through is terribly annoying, maybe its cos I'm strange and randomly highlight words and lines as i'm reading then un select them by clicking in what was inactive html (now links to itunes), its a tick i have and its got me to link to Rolando countless times in the last 5 mins, infact i couldnt figure it out at first, I thought there was an evil timed redirect at first ... it'd be nice if the button on the ad was the only active link tho.
All Touch Arcade reviews so far seem pretty fair to me. If you choose to let ngmoco have an add like this for Rolando then so be it. As long as it doesn't interfere with your reviews then its fine by me. If your reviews start ending up like IGNs then it would be a problem! p.s. It is a cool background image.
Toucharcade.com has become an integral part of my daily surfing now. Love the video reviews (no bothersome chit chat - just pure gameplay and sound effects!) and descriptions, and the forum community is really alive, not dead and empty like some other sites. Love this site! Keep up the good work Arn!
I agree that Touch Arcade has been very fair with their reviews so far (and I don't see that changing, unless they get new reviewers). That said, I think for a lot of people who frequent the site, we rely just as heavily (if not more so) on the lively forums for information about whether to buy or not. I mean, seriously, how many games look good, but then get panned by us after we've played them for a while. I've been saved from wasting money many times thanks to the great members (and there are a lot of you!), and I've found some real gems that would have remained under the radar if people (and not just Arn & Blake) were raving about it! I say, this remains the best iPhone gaming site ever, and pushing Rolando doesn't hurt one bit. So congrats to Arn & Blake! I hope the ngmoco sponsership gets you even more traffic & exposure!
The colours are cool! More friendly than the grey... No seriously, great to get some money out of the Nr. 1 site! For a looooong future of TA! Now I have to go back to Rolando, beating world 3.
Until more reviews and money (and less communication) is involved I will most certainly trust Touch Arcade with reviews and other bits.
Ads on the side of the front page. Are annoying. That's generally where I click to scroll up since sometimes the "cursor" can get locked into a table. Except now when I click there, it launches iTunes for Rolando. Incredibly annoying!
A few people have mentioned this issue. Didn't realize how it affected some people's browsing habits. I'm sorry I can't promise anything for this campaign since things are somewhat set, but we'll definitely avoid this "feature" in the future. Sorry, arn
It also bugs me too, at first I thought the page was set up to automatically redirect you to Rolando on iTunes, which would have sucked badly. I don't see why anyone would click the sides for the Rolando link anyway