Revenge of the geeks: reviews can make or break a video game.

Whatever happened to those optimistic forecasts of video game sales this holiday season?

Wall Street blames the unexpected downturn on disappointing new titles and hold-outs for next-generation game consoles. But there could be a better explanation within the pages of a magazine. Several of them, actually.

"Game reviewers used to just be a bunch of gaming geeks who nobody paid attention to," said Michael Pachter, analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities. "Now they're gaming geeks that everyone pays attention to. The reviewers are actually getting drunk with power."

The gaming press has established enormous influence on video game sales--arguably more than movie reviewers have on weekend box office results.

Game Informer Magazine has more than 2 million subscribers--that's enough to rank 26th in Advertising Age's top 200 magazines, ahead of Rolling Stone Magazine and Vogue. GamePro Magazine has a circulation of 425,000 and Electronic Gaming Monthly has a circulation of 575,000. There are also hundreds of gaming Web sites, led by GameSpot.com, GameSpy.com and IGN.com, and countless blogs.

But the influence goes beyond those numbers. After the magazines and Web sites review a game, the all-important buzz reaches out not only to readers of those publications, but their friends and friends of friends. Word of mouth can be especially potent around the holidays, when there is stepped-up demand among aunts and grandmothers looking for a Christmas gift.

"When a casual garner wants to know what's going on, they're going to come to somebody like one of our readers," said Simon Tonner, marketing director for GamePro Magazine and Web site.

A seasoned game critic could be a writer at an established magazine or a college student with a Web site, explained David Thomas, founder of the Video Game Journalist's Association and game critic for the Denver Post. Sometimes they're both: Game Informer's editor was appointed to the position at age 23, back in 1991.

One recent example of a game that was killed by critics is Activision Inc.'s "True Crime: New York City," which received an average grade of 63, according to Gamerankings.com, a CNET Web site that aggregates video game reviews and computes an overall rating.

A 63 is not good. In fact, it stinks--anything below 70 is usually considered a goner unless it's attached to a popular movie franchise that might draw fans no matter what.

Case in point is Vivendi Universal Games' "50 Cent: Bulletproof," based on the movie about the popular rapper. It was released in November to a 52-average rating, yet it's expected to be in the top-five selling games for the month. (Anything in the 80 to 90 range is considered to have good prospects and over 90 is exceptional.)

Ask a gamer

Hype is a powerful thing, and when the top video game magazines trash a title, it can send shudders down the retail channel. "The mass market isn't necessarily picking up Electronic Gaming Monthly to decide what to buy for the holiday," Thomas said. "But who do people go to for recommendations for what to get? They ask a gamer." he said.

Sometimes, early reviews are considered too harsh--as with "True Crime: New York," a sequel to 2003's wildly popular "True Crime: Streets of L.A."

"It's a solid game," said Pachter, who explained that reviewers are becoming especially critical of sequels, copycats or anything that's not a breakthrough game. "They essentially said 'It's pretty good, but we thought it would be better," Pachter said.

That's one of the problems with the gaming press--they tend to be harsher critics than most game consumers. "To our reader, it could be a pretty good game, but not as good as something else in the genre," said Simon Tonner, marketing director at GamePro Magazine and Web site. "There's this level of excellence a game enthusiast will expect from a game." GamePro gave "True Crime: New York" a 50 percent rating.

Some suspect that independent gaming magazines are more critical of titles coming from companies like Electronic Arts Inc. and Activision.

"[Reviewers] tend to have higher expectations for games coming from major publishers," Tonner said. A reviewer might receive 30 games a year from Electronic Arts, and "they're all going to be pretty good because EA knows how to make a game," he said. "So then you start comparing them in much more critical detail."

Analysts forecasts for November video game sales ranged from the downright dismal--down 29 percent over last year according to Bank of America analyst Gary Cooper--to the mildly pessimistic, down 16 percent, according to Wedbush Morgan's estimates.

Even so, several big-name titles were released in the last two months, including Activision's "Call of Duty: 2" and "Call of Duty: The Big Red One," and Electronic Arts' "Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire," and "Madden NFL 2006."

"You can't screw up Harry Potter. Grandma will buy it no matter what," Pachter said.