I disagree with this. I think pinside along with podcasters play a big part in what peiple buy when they hype certain games. At a minimum I've seen people here say comments like "I really need to give that game a try" based on threads or comments

Yeah, not a large percentage would buy a game just because someone says it's the best game ever, but if we had a poll and people were honest I think there would be more than a handful that put down a pre-order or bought a game based in part on what someone on here said about it.

If you were new and you saw a for sale thread for a game you think you'd like and everyone was saying it's a great game and a great deal, wouldn't those comments lead you to contact the seller? I liked the Houdini theme and enjoyed it when I played it, but I didn't pull the trigger in preordering until watching sdtms stream with the designer and seeing how awesome they think it was.

Its all just my opinion