Reason #8,000,000 I don't trust Wikipedia:

"The Official Xbox Magazine is dedicated to review every single Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade, downloadable content, and expansion pack title that ever comes out no matter how small or unpopular the game is."

Contrast that with the latest "cover" of Official Xbox Magazine (pictured above) and you'll see what I'm talking about. It features a full-blown ad for Rainbow Six Vegas 2, serving as a psuedo-cover, hiding the "real" one which features Fallout 3. Also, the back cover features an ad from a second Ubisoft game, Tom Clancy's FutureWar, to be released this fall.

"There's a two-page spread for Rainbow Six Vegas 2 not even twenty pages into the magazine," says Tim Rogers of gaming site insert credit. "Magazines have been figuratively selling their covers to the highest bidder for years now. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that a magazine did so literally."

Ubisoft, by the way, is the same company that decided EGM's coverage of Assassin's Creed was "the last straw" and decided to pull ads and coverage from the magazine. Future Publishing is the same company that publishes Nintendo Power, as well.

Some of you may be wondering why I care about this at all. Well, there are some lines in journalism, and some of them, if only for the sake of preserving integrity and proving honesty (sad people have to do this nowadays, but, y'know), shouldn't be crossed. Journalism has long had a funny little relationship with advertising; a fair portion of us have a sort of 'I'll put up with you because we're roomates and this place is great for the price' kind of relationship with it. Therefore, when advertising actually overtakes the actual content of the magazine (in more ways than one), that's the equivalent of your roomate setting up shop in your room. Your room! It's about not putting a dollar sign on every thing on this planet, as social commentator Bill Hicks would say. You want some ads? Fine. We'll help get the word out. You help us, we help you, hopefully people will make up their own minds about the ads, and we'll all be alright. But this? Why should I trust OXM after this? If they're willing to sell off the covers, why not the content?