EA’s boss, John Riccitiello, isn’t smiling much these days because the average review scores of Electronic Arts’ games have fallen from 77 last year to the present 72 on Metacritic.com, a website that gathers samplings of reviews from different sites and boils them all down to an overall number.
Riccitiello, while not happy with the performance of EA titles, acknowledges that Metacritic is an accurate source and reliable indicator of how video games are doing as he presented a chart during a Wall Street analysts’ meeting.
"There is nothing acceptable about that," in referring to the downturn in review scores. "Our core game titles are accurately measured and summarized by these assessments, and that is a very big deal. So this is perhaps, to me, the most important chart in this presentation, we need to recover here."
While Metacritic and other sites of this nature serve as a source of information for those who are looking for information regarding review scores, it isn’t out of the question for some game companies to contact gaming sites in order to try to influence or change low scores.
Dan Hsu of Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) said, "The only annoying thing about aggregate sites … is when the game companies use that against us. Sometimes we’ll hear from a game company that says ‘Hey, you’re the lowest score on Metacritic, can you change it?’"
But review scores have been under suspicion as games that are rated low by game sites can go on to become commercially successful products. Many games for the Wii, for instance, have consistently scored low but have generally been good sellers in spite of the below par ratings.
So while review scores can be a starting point for finding out how good a game is, it only serves as a guide and is by no means infallible. This being the case, how much do review scores influence you in the decision-making process of purchasing games?
[via Canada.com]
