For What It's Worth ... An Overview of Maxconsole
Brakken gives us his view of another site:P
Maxconsole owned and operated by Divineo, one of the largest video game console modification resources on the Internet is maintained by Zeus (Mr. Paraskevaides) who posts news on the site under the surname Malloc and DSLiteRulez (via Digg.com). Maxconsole's sole intent is to make money and in no way supports helping out sceners (members of the various scenes) unless it profits them in some way, shape or form.
Crimes committed against the scene are censoring and/or deleting forum posts that would imply a non-endorsed product is cheaper, performs better or is available to purchase from online stores who do not advertise on their site. An example of this would be various Nintendo Wii modchip comparison charts that show that the CycloWiz, a modchip produced by a subsidiary of Divineo is lacking in it's features compared to certain competing chips.
Another commonly committed crime is the promotion of products using misinformation to trick the unknowing public into thinking they are something they are not. Again I bring up the CycloWiz as an example. Days before the CycloWiz was officially announced Team NinjaMod, the creators of the first Nintendo Wii modchip named the Wiinja released information pertaining to their product. Soon after the news hit the mainstream sites Zeus posted an article about the CycloWiz stating it was "the first REAL" Nintendo Wii modchip which in fact was a blatant lie. Soon after this Maxconsole published what they called an "independent" review of the CycloWiz, but it was full of company propaganda and barely any facts. Since then Zeus, under orders from Max (the owner of Divineo) has failed to post most news of competing modchips including their releases and upgrades. Zeus has also failed to inform the public about the "free" open source modchips that have surfaced in the scene.
You might also noticed Maxconsole posts a vast amount of "non-scene" related news and claims they have "inside" sources in the general console video gaming scene where Zeus gets his news from. Well, this is untrue and in my opinion unbecoming of a "scene" news site. Almost all of these articles are simply copied (sometimes completely plagiarized) from the very popular social blogging site Digg.com. I would implore all of the visitors of Maxconsole to visit Digg and participate in the original articles discussion threads? Why? Well, for one you won't be bothered by the childish attitude you'll encounter on Maxconsole and you'll be supporting the source of the information and not someone who just copies and pastes the stories from a much larger and well supported community of users.
Also, when I ran TehSkeen Zeus refused to post any news about the various emulator projects being released for the Nintendo Wii/GameCube mostly in part he feared he would lose users and the fact that he and I do not get along. Yes, I dislike the man very much. Why? I'm glad you asked!
Three years ago I jumped back into the scene starting with a Nintendo GameCube. I had been missing in action for a few years as I went traveling around the country. Sadly, the first site I came across was PS2NFO. After becoming an active user they banned me and told me that I would need to pay them $20.00 USD to get my access back. They claimed I had broken some sort of policy, but would not inform me of what policy I broke. Of course I didn't pay them a dime and after I told my story in #gcmods (an IRC chatroom) I found out this was a common occurrence.
After this I found Maxconsole and started to participate in their forums and used them as my home base to publish my first version of my word famous Mod That Cube -FAQ-. Soon after this Zeus approached me and offered me a moderator position in their GameCube forums. As Zeus came across as a really nice guy (it's just an act, if you're a sucker for nice people he'll be pulling your chain for as long as you make him money) I agreed. It wasn't easy, as sometimes I can be a son of a bitch and pretty stubborn, but I was bringing in massive amounts of traffic and thousands of new users to his site.
All was going well and then came the review issue which ultimately led to me leaving Maxconsole. In a nutshell after I published a few reviews Zeus was contacted by Max (once again the owner of Divineo) who was appalled that Zeus was allowing me to post reviews that contained negative aspects about various products. Zeus demanded I rewrite the reviews and remove most of the negative comments as it was affecting his relationship with his sponsors. Well, in all honesty if a product is garbage I'm not going to try to sugar coat it so Zeus can buy more Steak and Beer (he's a big boozer, you'll notice the articles he publishes late at night are full of spelling and grammatical errors - why? He's drunker then a keg of beer).
These are only a handful of reason why I believe Maxconsole shouldn't be used as any type of creditable source for information. Sadly, many mainstream media sites are starting to use his publications as resources in their own articles. I for one feel sorry for them as they have clearly not done their homework on the credibility of Maxconsole, but at the same time am a bit put off by the fact that these so called reputable sites are lowering themselves to such standards.
