Here at Pixelosophy, as has been stated before, we don’t generally like numbers. They can be tweaked too easily to fit an argument and should be fully researched before believed. So, in this feature, we have undertaken our own research to bring you readers numbers that you can trust. Using Metacritic, I have compiled the number of games for each system that have scored in a certain range. You will see how many games scored in the 90’s, 80’s, etc. While this may not seem important at first glance, it fully relates to our discussion and analysis of the review system. We can say that games are scored too lightly or too highly all we want, but what are the facts? We can tell you that there are so few games that score in the 90’s and you should broaden your horizons, but why should you believe us? Hopefully, this little investigation will open everybody’s eyes to review scores and why we should read the whole review instead of just looking at the number.
Now, I know that a lot of people will protest to us using Metacritic, but come on, we all look at it. Also, Metacritic TRIES to assign scores based on information written when a score isn’t given. So, hopefully there is consistency. Also, be sure to check out the graph at the bottom for all of you visual learners!
Xbox 360
Total Number of Games-808
90 or above-27
80 or above-159
70 or above-230
60 or above-191
50 or above-116
40 or above-62
30 or above-18
20 or above-5
10 or above-1
Below 10-0
Playstation 3
Total Number of Games-476
90 or above-19
80 or above-126
70 or above-137
60 or above-105
50 or above-57
40 or above-24
30 or above-6
20 or above-2
10 or above-1
Below 10-0
Wii
Total Number of Games-567
90 or above-9
80 or above-66
70 or above-132
60 or above-152
50 or above-108
40 or above-87
30 or above-28
20 or above-11
10 or above-4
Below 10-0
All Systems (PS3, Xbox360, Wii)
Total Number of Games-1,851
90 or above-55
80 or above-351
70 or above-499
60 or above-448
50 or above-281
40 or above-173
30 or above-52
20 or above-18
10 or above-6
Below 10-0
So, what did we learn? Well, it’s really hard to have a game be worse than a 10, that’s for sure. What I find most interesting about this information is that most games fall in the 70 range. What I find interesting is that one could argue, based off of this information, that 70 seems to be the average, which as we discussed last week, should not be true. I believe that even reviewers have the school grading system, as Aaron talked about last week, so engrained in their psyche that they associate a 70 with being average. Now, it could be argued differently, which we will discuss on the show, but take some time to look over the numbers and really think about how few games garner scores above an 80, which is often the cutoff score for gamers, as we discussed previously.
