New Irish Games Website online

xbox360dublin

Hey Guys

A new irish website has come online. Its one of my friends from work and its only online a few days, so big changes are sure to happen, he was hoping to get some feedback.

It can be found here

Post any comments here or in the feedback page on the site.

Its not finished yet so go easy

xbox360dublin

the site has now updated with a sales figures page in conjunction with next gen wars.

Sales Figures

This is updated every few minutes.

Again this is a new site so let him know what you think, and how he can improve it

User45701

i had a look at it last nite just to see how much the ps3 was getting is ass kicked and i saw a game name that sounded interesting it was GT Pro Series for the Wii and it was a link to gamespot...
Thats my only complaint if you are going to link dont link to gamespot its a terrible site if your not registerd. Mabe link to the offical site of each game or mabe a popular fan site for each game? but not gamespot.

humanji

Also, the green on green title gif is a little hard to read. Sorry to be picky And maybe green might be a bad colour. Granted, green for Ireland, but it's also green for xBox, so it kind of gives the impression of favouritism. But that's just me.

As you said, it's early days yet, but I'm liking what I see so far (except for the banner, mentioned above )

DarthWraak

Its okay, Ill give you that..

Kazu

no Pc section meh :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

xbox360dublin

We will be adding a PC section in a few weeks, just trying to get things off the ground at the minute! Plus the design will change, the site was literally put up for PR reps to see, give them an idea what we were about!

Changes will be made and new sections will be added, so any feedback or suggestions are greatly appreciate, even negative ones, we cant grow otherwise

projectmayhem

site doesn't compare to 1up or gamespot (or any games news site that i regularly visit), design-wise anyway. but you've already got a competition from activision, without even owning a domain, so fair play

Gonzo

the site design is very poor with some pages not even rendering correctly.
check out page below where it just cuts off leaving a horrible white space at the bottom of most pages.
http://www.nextgenireland.citymax.com/page/page/4061893.htm

There is no consistency in review scores with some games getting marked out of a percentage and some like 9.2 out of 10. Its either one format or the other, should not be both.

As stated by the poster above me the website so far doesnt come anywhere near the look and feel of established gamer websites such as ign, gamespot, eurogamer etc so it has along way to catch up before it will grab the attention of gamers who will constantly come back and visit the website.

However I realise the website is still only in the early working stages so maybe you plan to have it much better looking by the time everythings ready for a full launch.

Vegeta

projectmayhem wrote:

site doesn't compare to 1up or gamespot (or any games news site that i regularly visit), design-wise anyway.

thank god it doesn't look like either of them, they are sh1te, especially gamespot, way too much going on on every page, too much flash and pop ups and garbage basically

although i do enjoy 1up and ocassionaly gamespot i am not a fan of their web design, way too busy. The OP should aim to be like an iPod, simple, clean and easy to use.

I know adverts are needed to fund the whole thing but some gaming websites are destroyed by them

koneko

The design needs a awful lot of work, and the reviews do too. Not just writing style, but so far only 360 reviews and everything seems to be getting 9/10 (and 100% for GoW?). Positive reviews are good, but you have to be critical of the flaws in a game, if people only see super-positive reviews on a site they'll quickly be turned off and think it's just marketing or shilling.

Did you intend for the banner at the top to say Call of Duty 3? I looked at the site the other day and it had a logo. If that was intentional, I'd change that, I know you have a CoD3 competition but it seems more like a CoD fansite then or favouritism.

Of the most important things about news and review sites is that they should be unbiased. There's nothing really wrong with having a site that caters only to Xbox or Playstation, but be upfront about it, so people know what to expect.

xbox360dublin

hey guys

thanks for this feedback.

Firstly, the COD logo will be changed, it just there for the competition.

We will be changing the format for the reviews, we are not only catering for XBOX360 but as its the only next gen console out, thats all we got, there will be wii reviews, ds, and psp reviews up shortly.

We will not be going for a look like gamespot, i know they are a huge site, but we just dont see the point, too much stuff going on at once to be honest!

The sections that are blank will soon contain content. The site is only online a few days! We had to put it online so the likes of activision, sega, nintendo ,and so on could see the site, they wouldnt send out review code until the seen the site.

In relation to competitions, we will have a sega competition next week for Sonic, and a Wii competition the week after that!

Ri_Nollaig

you might want to have a look at the release dates page, the psp's line up looks very similar to the 360's
and no game should ever get 100% as that means that there will never be a game better then it ever released

KdjaCL

Ri_Nollaig wrote:

and no game should ever get 100% as that means that there will never be a game better then it ever released

i hate that line....

So many websites feed that crap, why cant there be a 10/10? A game so perfect in its genre/format nothing else matches up to it so far.

Goldeneye 10/10 FPS N64
Hl1 10/10 FPS PC
Mario Kart 10/10 Driving Snes
Ico/SOTC 10/10 Adventure PS2
OOT 10/10 Adventure N64

To name but a few.. they are perfection in every way for their genre and system. Thats the goalposts in their respective genres and systems.


kdjac

koneko

10/10 can be used, but sparingly. Shouldn't be given out lightly.

monument

Ri_Nollaig wrote:

and no game should ever get 100% as that means that there will never be a game better then it ever released

No, it doesn’t. That idea is just plain silly. Not unlike scores, god help us all if people had to actually read reviews to find out what critics really think.

Creamy Goodness

wow that site looks like it's made by the producers of channel 6's Game on show.

Stephen

What the hell's the point of having "Dublin - <date>" in front of everything? You don't want your stuff to LOOK like press releases do you?

xbox360dublin

i like the date on front of everything! thats one thing that wont change!

Dont be at yourself

It looks terrible.

Vokes

xbox360dublin wrote:

i like the date on front of everything! thats one thing that wont change!

The Date is fine. But why do you have the word Dublin preceding it?

xbox360dublin

because thats where im from!

Dont be at yourself

Do you need to tell us that at the opening of every news story? Why?

Star Lord

The date in front of things is good, but ffs you dont have to write Dublin in front! Its an Irish site, we understand that already!

Lord Suave

I think you should change it to Dublin, Ireland just to avoid confusion.

xbox360dublin

hey, ok cool, listen i asked for your opinions so cool, i will remove the dublin from the news articles!

i want to make this site look at good as it can be in its early stages so keep the suggestions coming

ntlbell

xbox360dublin wrote:

hey, ok cool, listen i asked for your opinions so cool, i will remove the dublin from the news articles!

i want to make this site look at good as it can be in its early stages so keep the suggestions coming

I suggest hiring a web developer.

xbox360dublin

well i find it hard to take a suggestion from a guy with "NTL" in his username!
seriously, if your not being helpful and just rude, then dont suggest anything!

but for people who entered the competition, the winners have been announced!

ntlbell

xbox360dublin wrote:

well i find it hard to take a suggestion from a guy with "NTL" in his username!
seriously, if your not being helpful and just rude, then dont suggest anything!

but for people who entered the competition, the winners have been announced!

What has my username got to do with anything?

I think hiring a web dev that knows what he's doing is good advice, and probably the most honest and helpfull advice you're going to get.

User45701

oh em ye i have a suggestion for your gaming site.

Have a pc gaming section maybe???

xbox360dublin

there is a pc section coming, that was already covered in this thread

rip2roar

Also, another suggestion. Buy a domain....

xbox360dublin

i have bought a domain, its www.nextgenireland.com

just didnt bother changing the link here, they both work!

New competition online for rainbow six

Fanny Cradock

First off, good luck with the new site. I hope it takes off for you in a big way.

However, I think that you have a great deal of work ahead of you. I can think of a few problems that need to be addressed ASAP. Please consider this constructive criticism.


**You really need someone with a good deal of web design experience and talent to help with the layout and visuals. The current design is horrendous - especially your website's banner. The whole thing looks tacky and unprofessional.

::Edit::

I notice you have done the same with the Rainbow Six banner as you did with COD3. Creating a banner above your websites name and in a larger font is very confusing. Initially, I actually thought I had entered some COD3/ Rainbow Six fanboy site.
You are not advertising your website by highlighting a game title over your own. In fact, you really must be clear that the product you are selling is NextGenIreland.com and not a game. Businesses don't advertise a product at the expense of their own profile, you guys shouldn't either. Effectively what you are doing is covering up your logo for a game that people will lose interest in rapidly.


**I'm not sure if you are familiar with how research papers are normally laid out. Usually they begin with a concise summary and/ or abstract of the main findings/ facts of the paper. This make it easy to glance through and get a flavour of what's in-store. I would suggest that you do the same in your reviews. This may seem like odd advice, but as I casually glanced through some of the reviews, I was completely put off reading by the wall of text in front of my eyes.
You need more structure - start with a short review, your rating and some nice screen shots. Something like this. In similar manner to the link, I would also suggest breaking the body of the text up into a number of pages for easy reading. Page 1 could be the summary, rating and images for the casual reader, Page 2 could be in-depth analysis and so on...


**Finally, I wasn't impressed with the high marks that ALL of the games have received. Giving EVERY game a rating of 9 and above completely devalues your rating system. As an example, if a reader had enough money to buy a game but had no idea which, they would look at the reviews to help decided (duh!). However, the fact that all the games are rated as 9+ wouldn't help him at all. I've often checked sites just to see what the top games are and then make a decision from there. As things stand, your site doesn't help at all.


Hope I haven't been too harsh.

Good luck!

xbox360dublin

hey dude,

now that was fantastic. you put a lot of effort into what youve written about the site and i appreciate it. The banner and design is actually going to change, ive stated before that in order for PR companies to actually send stuff to review, i needed to have a site up and running. So the actual look will change!

What youve said about the review structure is fantastic, and extactly the kind of input i was looking for!

Thank you

Fanny Cradock

No probs!

realsubzero

just had another look at the site there:

www.nextgenireland.com <-- is this the same site??

cause it looks much different. while still has a long way to go
its certainly looks much better.

Dont be at yourself

I dont like the centre-aligned text, nor the fact that the text doesnt wrap around the images. Fix them two, remove one of the logos, and you're getting somewhere.

thebman

Where you have Xbox 360 etc.. should be under a title called news in my opinion so people can see that all those links go to news items about whichever console.

Then when you get the Wii etc.. do the same and create a Review section of links for Xbox 360 and Wii so users can easily navigate to the reviews for the console they want. This should link to a page which is sorted by release date but with an option to view it in A-Z order.

The top banner seems to take up way too much room for my liking (even though it looks good, maybe get rid of the cracked parts or make them smaller or something) and when I was reading a review, the score is at the bottom of the page and you should have it a little up so its easier to find and see. Maybe put it at the top of the review or have space below the score at the bottom of the page.

Also I'd split the reviews into two page so that the navigation links are always in view on the page as it is, once you go below navigation area, the page starts to be rendered wrong in Opera at least. You also don't want people scrolling forever and should just put in a page 2 button. Wouldn't be too much effort.

You have a problem on the right side of your banner when it stops being your banner there is a huge change in colour.

Thats all I can think of right now.