Two Way Relationships?

It’s very apparent to me that due to the very competitive nature of the gaming industry, that many people involved in it, don’t see working with Publisher PR or Community representative as a two way relationship.

Take large, voluntary fan sites like BXB for example. We don’t make money; we don’t have political agendas; I’m not just a ‘blagger’; we’re just here to write and talk about what we love which is games and specifically the Xbox.

However, it seems that many of the companies employed by Microsoft to deal with these fan sites simply don’t see this as a two way relationship. In my opinion there isn’t enough support from Microsoft for growing, large, professional fan and community sites like BXB and other similar sites.

First of all, as we all know, there are a very limited number of Xbox 360 development kits available and all the media outlets that Microsoft support and endorse have been sent them. However, Red aren’t then supplied with the same amount of preview code meaning that some media outlets with an XDK can’t get the code.

Excuse me if I’m being a bit stupid here, but surely it make sense to supply as much preview code as there are XDKs? Maybe it’s a budget thing? All business have to run on a budget but Microsoft doesn’t exactly have shallow pockets and it’s not like they’ve not thrown billions upon billions of dollars at making their console a success.

Red has to prioritise who it sends code out to maximise coverage for the games that are released but their hands are being tied by not being supplied with enough code. It just doesn’t add up for me.

Moving on from that, where is the other forms of support Red can offer? From the horses mouth, BXB is a website supported by Microsoft but where’s the support? I get the occasional press release, but I can get them without being officially supported!?

BXB gets great support from so many publishers but it seems that the one I should be working the closest just isn’t interested.

Maybe I should get down to Red's Offices and just shake them really hard while ensuring they spell my name correctly...