Before you read on, please I beg of you, don’t go all conspiracy theorist over something like this. It looks as though the media outlets who usually bring you your reviews of a given game won’t be doing so in the usual manner this time around.
Bungie are planning to dispatch review copies of the game to the media towards the end of the week and the games public servers will be activated as soon as the date turns September 9th across the international line. So what does this mean?
First of all, it means you’re not going to get buzz words ( 10/10 completely mind blowing, stunning, truly “next gen”, ultimate experience etc) crammed down your throat in an effort to make you buy the game because reviewers can’t really experience the game in its entirety in any meaningful way until the rest of the playerbase is there.
However, it also means that Bungie are running a bit of a risk here. Without adequate media coverage, specifically reviews, they face the risk of not meeting predicted sales from people who don’t know what to expect not buying the game. But given the absolutely insane numbers of pre-orders and the hugely successful Beta program that they ran, I think they are perfectly safe.