engadget is described as a “news, reviews and opinion outlet with obsessive coverage of cutting edge gadgets, consumer electronics and the science and technology they’re built upon.”
The news, reviews and opinions are all presented in a chronological list without much to differentiate one from another apart from the title of the article. I read the site on a near-daily basis and appreciate that it takes a lighter and less technical approach to electronics and gadgetry than, say, anandtech.com and its half dozen pages of benchmarks illustrating how the latest Android phone is slightly better or worse than other phones at rendering blobs and bits.
Reviews and opinion pieces on engadget are always going to have a little more personality injected into them, but I’ve noticed lately the writing of these pieces seems to be skewing more informal, with some resembling forum posts rather than something you’d expect of a professionally written article.
Take this opinion piece How would you change the Nintendo Wii U? I’ve included the entire thing below, not because I’m a plagiarizing so and so, but because it’s quite short, as its main intent is to foster forum discussion (which does not justify the tone used, in my opinion):
The Wii was, undoubtedly, the success story of the previous console generation, encouraging millions of novice gamers to wave their arms around like a crazy person. The Wii U’s big gimmick, touchscreen gaming, made plenty of sense, considering the quantity of mobile and DS users out there, but it never seemed to take off in the same way. Launching well ahead of the Xbone and PS4, the general opinion of our reviewer was that it simply wasn’t ready for the big time, and sales seem to have backed that up. A year has passed now, so it’s high time that we asked you what Nintendo should have done differently? Sign up at the forums and talk us some change.
I realized as I was reading this I was mentally editing it. Here’s the version I cobbled together (with mark-up, such as WordPress allows):
The Wii was, undoubtedly, the success story of the previous console generation, encouraging millions of novice gamers to wave their arms around like a crazy person people. The Wii U’s big gimmick, touchscreen gaming, made plenty of sense, considering the quantity number of mobile and DS users out there, but it never seemed to take took off in the same way. Launching well ahead of the Xbone Xbox One and PS4, the general opinion of our reviewer was that it simply wasn’t ready for the big time [without substantiation or at least a link, this assertion is meaningless and should be rewritten or removed], and sales seem to have backed that up. More than a A year has passed since its launch now, so now it’s high is a good time that we asked to ask you what Nintendo should have done differently.? Sign up at the forums and talk to us about some changes.
Cleaned up and with a previous engadget article linked that shows the poor sales of the Wii U:
The Wii was the success story of the previous console generation, encouraging millions of novice gamers to wave their arms around like crazy people. The Wii U’s big gimmick, touchscreen gaming, made sense considering the number of mobile and DS users out there, but it never took off in the same way. Launching well ahead of the Xbox One and PS4, Nintendo was forced in January to slash sales expectations of the Wii U for 2014 from 9 million to 2.8 million. More than a year has passed since its launch so now is a good time to ask you what Nintendo should have done differently. Sign up at the forums and talk to us about changes.
Is this better? Sign up on this blog and let me know.
Please don’t do this if you’re a spambot.
