I know, old news.

[elchevalier]

Still worth pointing out this:

www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=4422

Professional reviews are still in third place, neverless, reviews made by fans surpass them. Again, any doofus can review a game, so much for credentials and what not. Advertising is on the very last place, so clearly there's something wrong with today's marketing strategies. One more reason for companies to reconsider just how badly they are wasting money in useless ads that nobody is going to see, or pay any attention whatsoever.

[AllenSmithee]

Word of mouth should easily be first.

Pretty much everything else is bullshit. I mean, you should try and do a little bit of everything. A video and a friend are pretty much all I need.

[elchevalier]

I went for demos/renting, preview images and videos help too of course. As for word of mouth, depends how many people you know that play games, and not just Halo and COD.

[feilong80]

I find this poll curious though; I wonder how many of those people really are effected by advertising, but just won't admit it in a poll. Nobody wants to admit they are led around by admen. But yet people must be, or else advertising dollars would never get spent.

[ECM]

What makes this infinitely worse is that it's GameFAQs, where only the nerdiest of the nerd gamers hangout, i.e. it's not even remotely representative of gamers as a whole (and that's where Smithee is correct: word of mouth means everything to the non-nerd gamer).

[AllenSmithee]

they're not even the nerdiest, unless by nerd you mean LOSER.

[kog3100edw]

I'm pretty reliant on demo games and online videos now.
But before those really became available (for consoles) I relied on genre and studio or personnel affiliations... ie, if Treasure made it, or it was a 2d shooter I'd probably like it. Once a title piqued interest that way, it'd be down to screenshots and/or the opinion of a reviewer I had a history of common opinion with.

I STILL pretty much do it this way, but demos and videos are another really useful tool. I've pretty much avoided buying crap all these years (and that's a lot of years), but there is so much more out there... and magazines are basically shite these day. I come to rely more on fellow gamer tastes and opinions now too, which are more readily available via the internet. Before online communities were so common, 'serious' game playing friends were few and far between. All my regular friends thought my games and setups were badass, but they weren't particularly discerning about what they played themselves.