“Nobody here ever bothers about Metacritic. We think of it as irrelevant, quite frankly. We only concentrate on what the users think.” — Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley, explaining why they don’t worry about Sniper Elite getting low scores from reviewers.
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “The goal of this is to help people develop more games without having to mow lawns.” — Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, explaining why Epic has set up a $US5 million fund to give developers up to $US50,00 dollars to make games using Unreal Engine 4.
QUOTE | “AAA is the equivalent of the One Per cent right now. It comes with all these caveats. You can’t make the crazy stuff really.” — David Goldfarb, ex-Battlefield dev, talking about why he’s left AAA development and founded a new studio.
QUOTE | “Minecraft was the reboot of the graphics arms race — it literally reset projects.” — Veteran designer Brenda Romero, talking about why gameplay matters and why game developers need to feel they are making something great.
QUOTE | “There’s a lot of money to be made in a lot of games, but it’s not always our money to make.” — Paradox VP of acquisition Shams Jorjani, talking about how the publisher passed on publishing World of Tanks and Banner Saga.
QUOTE | “I think the price tag that Microsoft paid to buy Mojang can be explained by how much of a cultural phenomenon and a cultural item Minecraft has become.” — Thomas Bidaux of ICO Partners, talking about the games and platforms that got the most press attention last year.
QUOTE | “Our goal is to make the most entertaining presentation as possible, that’s our goal in creating fatalities.” — Warner Bros. Interactive games marketing manager Brian Goodman, talking about Mortal Kombat X and how they’re trying to attract more people to the fighting game genre.
QUOTE | “As consumers get burnt, they begin to understand what purchasing decisions they’re going to make in order to not get burnt the next time around.” — Introversion director Mark Morris, talking about why they were lucky that Prison Architect was one of the first games for Steam Early Access.
STAT | 40 per cent — Amount that the PS4 will outsell the Xbox One through 2018, according to a report by Strategy Analytics; the company expects Sony to have a global installed base of 80 million PS4s by then, with Xbox One at 57 million.
STAT | $US465 million — Predicted size of the eSports market in 2017, according to a “conservative” scenario by analyst firm Newzoo; there could be as many eSports fans watching in 2017 as there are NFL fans.
QUOTE | “In Games & Network Services, the Company will strive to further expand the installed user base of the PlayStation platform and PlayStation Network.” — Sony CEO Kaz Hirai, explaining to investors the company’s plan to concentrate on Devices, Games & Network Services, Music and Pictures from now on.
QUOTE | “From day one, we decided our job was to engage the people who helped fund this game while we make it, not wait until we finish the game and they get to play it.” — Veteran gamemaker Chris Roberts, head of Cloud Imperium Games, talking about why Star Citizen is being created with so much focus on the community.
Comments
10 responses to “This Week In The Business: Taking Aim At Metacritic”
This is interesting… and a little disappointing when you think about NFL being a largely North American phenomenon, compared to eSports, which should attract a global audience.
Do people actually buy games according to metacritic?
I use metacritic to find various reviews and then read the bigger sites that have reviewers with similar views to mine. It usually works quite well (except for Sniper Elite III: that was a terrible game).
I know many people bring it up in arguments lol.
Personally I avoid the place and tend to get my reviews from other sources coupled with gameplay vids
I just don’t understand the logic behind it tbh. I choose to make my mind up about things after release rather than someone else doing it for me beforehand.
I’ve browsed Metacritic before to see what I’ve missed. I also then read reviews though, I never go by just a number.
I was always more of a gamerankings guy, myself.
I find metacritic is a good source for an average industry review score. If you just trust one site for your reviews they can sometimes get it completely wrong, eg IGN and Alien Isolation.
Dragon age on pc is why i wont be trusting professional reviews any more and especially not metacritic. Even the user reviews are massively skewed by blatant ea sponsored reviewers.
I don’t really read reviews at all, the only thing I look for in reviews is how long the reviewer played the game for to give me an indication of how long the game is.
What really makes me decide to buy a game is gameplay videos and interesting mechanics.
Looks like it is working to me:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/the-order-1886
I usually ignore/laugh at the professional reviews and then look at the user review score.