The next-generation consoles will bring in online content sales enough to eclipse revenues from subscription fee models. A study by tech market analysts at ABI Research forecasts that gaming downloads for consoles will grow from less than $1 million in 2005 to over $3.8 billion in 2011, which can be attributed to free online services from Sony and Nintendo.

ABI speculates that Microsoft may be forced to drop its subscription model and opt for a primarily content-supported model.

Game Industry Salaries
Game Developer Magazine asked its subscribers to report how much they earn per year and 6000 responses were received. Only data from those with three to six years of experience is included. Salaries are in USD.

Hey, how much do you earn per year by spamming web forums like this?

Their salary is probably listed somewhere in here.

While that's mildly interesting, it's only speculation, and game-industry analysts aren't exactly known for being on target either.

What's particularly interesting is that the three spammers from a certain website who have recently shown up here seem to be big fans of Sony and Nintendo. And while their initial topics advertising said companies are in impeccable english, their other posts used to make them seem like normal people are not.

If you read Penny Arcade, you might have seen an "article" (read: commentary) they had a while back about these "fake grass roots" campaigners. See this comic in particular; sadly I can't seem to find the text that goes with it (it's not the commentary for that day's comic, certainly).

Edit: HTML != BBCode

Yes, that's precisely what's going on here. They tried something else on Just Tech the other day with two posts from two different members (same IP). One asked a question, the other answered it with a link.

It would be less sad if they were bots/a program of some kind.

Since the entire point is to infiltrate online communities, you really need a real person to "seed" the advertisements. Bots just don't pass the Turing test yet; they're too recognizable, even given the modern level of discourse on online forums.

I get it....! You can see I get it by clicking that link above. There have been many Nintendo related topics every... two days.