Well someone's got to do it, and I doubt there are offers from an external party!

You're probably right that it wouldn't be punished by law as Insider hasn't explicitly said anything homophobic, only insinuated/implied it. Plus the law/society is much more lenient on homophobia than, for example, racism. As I said before, I bet no one would be so understanding of Insider's comments if the negative insinuation was based around skin colour. However, strictly speaking it does fall foul of that law.

Whether you think people should be allowed to say whatever they want, regardless of how horrible it is, or whether you think some people need protecting against such abuse is another matter. If you've never been on the end of it then you'll likely be pro free speech regardless of content, but if you've suffered a lot of, say, racism then you may think there should be some legislation is certain key areas. Where you draw the line, if indeed you think there should be a line, is a very difficult question and one I'm undecided upon.

As for your very last sentence, well you wouldn't have wanted to mention anything pro-Communist during the McCarthy years, that's for sure! I am being facetious of course, but no country has true freedom of speech, yes the US has more lenient (or stricter depending on which way you look at it) rules regarding freedom of speech, however, you can't incite a riot for example, or defamation. A clever US lawyer could probably argue that calling someone homosexual, when the intention is negative, could be defamation. Although it depends on the particular state. Ironically they'd be more likely to succeed with the case if Aaron wasn't actually gay but if it was felt the insinuation could harm his private and/or professional life! That's all very much depending on circumstances, who is involved, where they live etc etc etc, it's very complicated. The US clearly draws a different line to the UK, but there still is a line somewhere so no, no society in the world (to my knowledge) has true freedom of speech. Anyway, I digress.

My point is, implying someone is homosexual, where the goal is to offend/annoy them, implies that homosexuality is bad, which is homophobic and therefore could easily be argued to be hateful against homosexuals, hence is hate speech. Whether it would be punished or not is another matter entirely, if it was based on skin colour it probably would be though.

Ah the last resort of the person who can't justify their argument, calling someone a fanboy. Well you got me with that one, how ever can I possibly answer such an incisive comment? Oh yes, this is how: I own all consoles and favour none of them, I simply don't like two things that exist in all your posts....

1). Your patronising insinuation that you know more than everyone, and your opinion is the most important, partly via your username and partly your tone.

2). Total biased nonsense that is full of marketing cliches and misuse of statistics (see below for an example).

I do not think it is unreasonable, nor the actions of a "fanboy", to pull someone up on such unpleasantness. If you were spouting such nonsense but with the opposite bias, I would call you up on it with an equal enthusiasm, the subject of your bias is irrelevant, it is purely the existence of bias and the nonsense that comes along with it that I find distasteful. Lets get this clear again so you don't make the same mistake: I own all consoles, I favour none, which is why you can browse my posting history and see both positive and negative comments about all consoles. As such, the only thing that drives me to reply to you is not to defend my favoured console (because none exists) but purely to highlight biased marketing nonsense.

A few other things I notice about your last post:

No direct rebuttal of my suspicions that you are deliberately posting about products in a way designed to be picked up by indexing algorithms and thus make them appear artificially high in these indices.

You conveniently prove my point by doing this very thing in your reply - at no point in this discussion have I made any comment about 360 versus PS3 sales, yet you magically make a comment about that very topic, completely out of nowhere, which is clearly designed to up the index count on that topic.

you tried to say Microsoft was lying - where EXACTLY have I made any comment relating to Microsoft lying, I have never once disputed the fact the 360 has outsold the PS3 by "nearly" two to one in NA, ever. Prove me wrong, unless you've made that up of course! I assume if you do not reply quoting where I have said this, then you admit that I never said this and retract the accusation.

Incidentally, I do not disagree that NA is the "largest game market in the world", but that doesn't mean that statistics from only this market tell the full story, the rest of the world combined is still a larger portion of the pie than just NA, so ignoring this is foolish, or it's just cherry picking your statistics and misrepresenting their importance - remember the misuse of statistics I mentioned above?

going so far as to say I am insane - where EXACTLY have I made any comment about you that includes the word "insane". Again, I assume if you do not reply quoting where I have said this, then you admit that I never said this and retract the accusation.

That's a good point, maybe it's all an elaborate ruse and it's actually working for Sony! I suspect though that the aim is just to get as much commenting on the topic it's paid to get in the limelight as possible. For example, I think the explicitly positive comments about Halo and GoW, after recent rumours about them, is probably a deliberate attempt to get them high in various indices, like the Edge Game Index. To be specific, it recently suggested incorporating aspects of GoW into Halo with a gushing post that was clearly written so that it would be picked up as positive by the algorithms that calculate these indices. I replied in detail explaining why I thought the games were good but that the proposed idea swapping was not a good idea, with specific examples, and rather than reply explaining why it disagreed, it merely reiterated how much it loved those games with no comment on my points whatsoever - this seems rather blatant cliched marketing and trying to fit in with the algorithms to me. Furthermore, it has already admitted to working in marketing and I can easily imagine that a marketeer would view getting a given product high in an index, even if that involves some negative comments, as a very positive thing. You're right though, it can be very amusing!

Good ideas about Nintendo, Starfox in particular, could be very interesting. I agree though, I think they've found it easier to fall back on old IPs and carnival games, given that more recent new IP has not been all that successful. Here's hoping though.

Exactly, grognard66 seems to be missing the key point slightly. Whether you happen to be gay is merely a coincidence and not the issue. The issue is the use of homosexuality to try to affect someone in a negative way, which implies homosexuality is wrong and is therefore homophobic. That is the offensive part and should be offensive to anyone, whether they are gay or not. The fact you happen to actually be gay is a side issue at best. I'm willing to bet Insider wouldn't make a derogatory comment whose foundation is an implication about your skin colour, and if he did he'd be being racist, irrespective of your genetic heritage.