siyrobbo said:
bet they haven't signed an NDA, small unheard of sites and blogs often have the first reviews because they've gotten a copy early and aren't bound by nda's
Well, true, but there's also the difference between NDAs and embargos. I'm not certain about how it works with Gears, but for all the games I've ever got to review, I've never signed an NDA (although I have for preview events). It's been a press embargo included in the package. The threat isn't a legal one - more that if you run a review pre-embargo, the PRs will take you off their list, and it's more an implied threat than explicit.
An embargo from a source in regular journalism is a request that the journalist usually accepts because they want to continue receiving information from that source - in consumer journalism, it's similar, but the source is instead a PR or marketing firm and the journo wants to keep receiving products for review.
Now, for bigger titles, NDAs could of course come into the question. There was a big review event for Gears 3 a few weeks ago in London, and I'm certain anyone who got their copies there signed an NDA on entry. Anyone who requested a copy from PR and received one may have had to sign an NDA in advance but I have no knowledge either way here - ordinarily I'd doubt it but it's one of MS's biggest releases in a while and they might be being careful.
The point, though, is that rather than risking legal action, BeingNerdy might instead be risking their credentials with Microsoft by running a review early, banking on the fact that it's favourable to keep them in the clear and enticed into it by the early pageviews they'll get from the thousands of folk reading this very thread.
Or, of course, they could have paid through the nose for a broken street date, as you say.
