At least not when it comes to Wii games. The EA Sports’ label president tells Gamasutra that the company is less focused on Metacritic averages for Wii software than it is for more general consumer reviews. He points to Amazon.com user reviews and more mainstream media outlets—as well as “mommy bloggers”—as more valuable measuring sticks.

On the topic of EA Sports own EA Sports Active, Moore says that sites like our own aren’t necessarily what the publisher is targeting.

“We’re not going to Kotaku or Operation Sports on this one, we’re going to Amazon,” Moore tells Gamasutra. “The thing is with the Wii, it seems to be for the gaming sites, it’s the last platform they review.”

Granted, we have yet to review EA Sports Active. But that’s only because we just got the game last week, while the majority of us were at E3. We’re also not going to factor into the Metacritic average, as we don’t provide them with review scores.

But we’ll get to it, Peter. We’ll definitely get to it.

EA Sports’ Moore: Metacritic Less Relevant To Wii Game Sales [Gamasutra]

Picture the scene: your mum walks into GameStop. She walks to the Xbox 360 section, and picks out a game for your birthday. At random. What are the odds she picks a good one?

Market research firm EEDAR are on-hand to help you find out. Having tracked every Xbox 360 game’s score in Metacritic, they’ve found that 13% of Xbox 360 games average a review score of 85 or higher. That’s 48 games. Leaving 49% of games scoring between 66-84%, and 38% of games scoring 65 or lower.

So odds are good she’ll get you a game that’s… well, if not Crackdown, then at least halfway decent.

Games At-a-Glance: Xbox 360 Quality [Edge]

Self-described Metacritic-expert Tim Sweezey over at GameQuarry.Com has a fascinating report up about the developers that are most consistent in publishing a certain quality of game.

In other words, their games are consistently good, bad, mediocre, just as long as they are consistent.

While on the one hand you might say that’s not very worthwhile information for gamers, it does provide you insight into which publishers you can expect to not surprise you when it comes to quality of games.

For instance, Rockstar games is the most consistent, with 23 titles, most in the well-received range. While Ubisoft is the least consistent with 237 games spread across the board. Granted, 75 of their titles received an “F” and only 4 an “A”.

The report offers interesting insight into, perhaps, how diligent a company is about their process of killing off and bolstering game ideas.

Before jumping to too many conclusions, you should keep in mind that this report was commissioned by an unnamed entity for public disclosure. It also would help if you took a look at the methodology used.

In a nutshell, Sweezey and crew looked at games for the PC, PS3, Xbox360, PSP, Wii, and the DS that came out from 2000 to 2008 and had a Metacritic score available based on at least four reviews.

Most / Least Consistent Publishers? [David Perry]

Sega Europe boss Mike Hayes says Metacritic scores are indicative of certain games’ success, and while score targets aren’t written into every developer contract, Metacritic does have value — especially in judging expensive projects.

“We’re a creative business, and how do you put objectivity into it? But at the end of the day publishers will always want to do that, particularly if you’re spending $20 million — you have to try and find that objectivity, and it’s going to come from how much it costs, when it’s coming out, and how good the game is,” Hayes told GamesIndustry.biz.

Further, “If you’re going for a high-end PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 game and you want to break out in the genre, or something like that, you have to target that quality – because otherwise you don’t have a hope in hell,” Hayes said. “There’s too much evidence that shows games which score below a certain level in certain genres are not going to cut through.”

Hayes said that “we won’t say to every developer we work with that there’s a target in there.” Which sounds like, for some developers, there is. And the size of the deal seems to be a factor in how much a Metacritic score means to the project.

“Where we’re spending a lot of money, and the score is essential to the success of the product, absolutely I think there’s a value in it,” Hayes said, adding “I don’t think it’s unreasonable for publishers spending that much money to have certain expectations of quality levels. But to demand it on absolutely everything wouldn’t be right at all.”

Metacritic Helps Business Objectivity says Hayes [GamesIndustry.Biz via play.tm]

Metacritic put together a list of the best and worst games of 2008 on every console. The top reviewed aren’t that surprising, but there are some real doozies in the duds.

The list was created by looking at average review scores and includes a couple Grand Theft Auto IV mentions, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Fallout 3, among others.

DS
1. Chrono Trigger
2. The World Ends With You
3. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
4. Advance Wars: Days of Ruin
5. Professor Layton and the Curious Village

Dud
Homie Rollerz

PC
1. Fallout 3
2. Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor
3. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
4. Grand Theft Auto IV
5. World of Goo

Dud
Beauty Factory

PS2
1. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4
2. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES
3. MLB 08: The Show
4. Pro Evolution Soccer 2008
5. FIFA Soccer 09

Dud
Women’s Volleyball Championship

PS3
1. Grand Theft Auto IV
2. LittleBigPlanet
3. Bioshock
4. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
5. Rock Band 2

Dud
Vampire Rain: Altered Species

PSP
1. God of War: Chains of Olympus
2. Patapon
3. LocoRoco 2
4. FIFA Soccer 09
5. Space Invaders Extreme

Dud
King of Clubs

Wii
1. Super Smash Bros. Brawl
2. World of Goo
3. MaBoShi: The Three Shape Arcade
4. Okami
5. Tetris Party

Dud
SPOGS Racing

Xbox 360
1. Grand Theft Auto IV
2. Gears of War 2
3. Fallout 3
4. Braid
5. Rock Band 2

Dud
Jumper

Hit up the site to read why these games were so good… and so bad.

Best of 2008 [Metacritic, thanks Alan]

Every man, his dog and his dog’s pet rabbit have a “best of” list. This isn’t one of those. This is Metacritic’s “best of”, meaning it was compiled not by fragile human subjectivity, but numbers.

Courtesy of MTV (who did the original legwork), then, here is the list of 2008’s ten (well…fifteen, since it includes ties) best video games, as judged by a collection of games writers then mediated by the laws of mathematics.

1. Grand Theft Auto IV (98 — 360, 98 — PS3)
2. LittleBigPlanet (95 — PS3)
3. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (94 — PS3)
4. BioShock (94 — PS3) and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (94 — PS2)
5. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (93 — Wii) and Gears of War 2 (93 — 360)
6. Chrono Trigger (93 — DS) and Braid (93 — 360)
7. World of Goo (94 — Wii, 91 — PC / AVERAGE: 92.5)
8. Fallout 3 (93 — 360, 92 — PS3, 92 — PC / AVERAGE: 92) and Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Armour (92 — PC)
9. Rock Band 2 (92 — 360, 91 — PS3 / AVERAGE: 91.5)
10. God of War: Chains of Olympus (91 — PSP) and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (91 — PC)

Persona 4? World of Goo? Chains of Olympus? No complaining from anyone about that list, OK?

As a bonus, Metacritic is also obviously able to tell us what 2008’s worst games were in the eyes of the critics.

1. SPOGS Racing (18 — Wii) and Pong Toss: Frat Party Games (18 — Wii)
2. Beauty Factory (22 — PC)
3. Homie Rollerz (23 — DS)
4. Jumper: Griffin’s Story (28 — Wii) and Racing Team Manager (28 — PC)
5. Jumper: Griffin’s Story (29 — 360) and Game Party 2 (29 — Wii), Beat’n Groovy (29 — 360)
6. George and the Jungle and the Search for the Secret (30 — PS2), Woman’s Volleyball Championship (30 — PS2), Vampire Rain: Altered Species (30 — PS3), Ford Racing Off Road (30 — Wii) and Crazy Mouse (30 — 360),
7. Toy Shop (31 — DS) and Rapala Fishing Freanzy 2009 (31 — PS2)
8. Falling Stars (32 — PS2), Best of Tests DS (32 — PS2), Iron Man (32 — PC) and Code of Honour 2: Conspiracy Island (32 — PC)
9. Target: Terror (33 — Wii) and The Incredible Hulk (33 — PC)
10. Jackass: The Game (34 — PC) and King of Clubs (34 — Wii)

Glad Vampire Rain made the cut. There’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back thanks to that pile of shit.

The Top 10 Best Games Of 2008, According To Metacritic [MTV]
The Top 10 Worst Games Of 2008, According To Metacritic [MTV]

So EA crowed that it had 17 games scoring 80 or better on Metacritic (I love it; we’re officially into Wine Spectator-style rating snobbery with video game criticism). How’d other major publishers do?

MTV Multiplayer took a look and found that, while no one beat EA, Sony was close behind with 15 grabbing 80 or better, an out-and-out wallop of Nintendo (six games) Ubisoft and Activision (5) and Microsoft (4) — interesting considering how Nintendo and Activision cleaned up in sales this year.

It would be good to know what percentage this represents of a publisher’s total releases. EA, of course, had the panned Mirror’s Edge and Need for Speed:Underground, as well as average moneymakers coming out of its sports division. But an average of these scores also shows EA leading, with 89.52, followed by Activision (86.78), Microsoft (86.50), Nintendo (84.50), Sony (84.13) and Ubisoft (82.93).

2008 Market Winners Nintendo and Activision Crushed In Quality By EA and Sony, According To Metacritic [MTV Multiplayer]

Rock Band 2 currently has the best score of the bunch, a group harvested by MTV Multiplayer so you (and we) don’t have to. You’ll find the expected stuff — Madden NFL 09, Dead Space, Spore — but you won’t find one of Electronic Arts’ biggest risks. No, Mirror’s Edge didn’t make the cut, and just barely. That score of 50 from BigPond GameArena probably had something to do with it.

We hope you’ve learned a valuable lesson about striving for quality and new IP, EA. Stop trying to showboat with all your “effort” and “dedication” to “improvement.” We don’t like yer kind!

These Are The 17 EA Games That Critics Really Liked In 2008, With One Glaring Omission [MTV Multiplayer]

“That’s right. We’re trying to manage the review scores at the request of Eidos.”

When asked why, the spokesperson said: “Just that we’re trying to get the Metacritic rating to be high, and the brand manager in the US that’s handling all of Tomb Raider has asked that we just manage the scores before the game is out, really, just to ensure that we don’t put people off buying the game, basically.”

Well that certainly makes sense. We wouldn’t want low review scores putting people off.

What the holy hell? A request like this is not only insulting, it’s downright unethical. Basically they are asking review sites to withhold information from the public in order to fool them into buying a game with an artificially inflated Metacritic score…and they are doing it without batting an eyelid, as if this were just everyday business.

As Videogaming247 writes, British site Eurogamer has already gone live with their 7 out of 10 review, which the representative said had caused “problems”, and the Official Xbox Magazine in the UK has also posted a 7.0. Checking Metacritic now, I can see IGN and 1UP with scores of 75, with GamePro adding to the 70 set, for a combined average of 78, which is still considered generally favourable.

In this day and age, where everything eventually winds up on the internet, it really makes you wonder how they figured they could get away with something like this without being ratted out by the more ethical gaming press. Extremely bad form, Eidos.

We’ve contacted an Eidos to see if the same reviewing rules apply in the US.

UK Tomb Raider: Underworld reviews under 8/10 silenced until Monday [Videogaming247]

UPDATE: Videogaming247 has posted a follow up to the original story, having received the following statement from Simon Byron, one of the directors of the PR firm Barrington Harvey:

Barrington Harvey is not in the position of telling reviewers what they can and cannot say. We love Tomb Raider and believe it merits a score of at least 8/10, but if someone disagrees that’s entirely their prerogative. No problem at all. Seriously: no problem.

Our original NDA stated that in order to receive an advance copy of the game, reviewers agreed not to post reviews ahead of 5:00pm, Wednesday 19th November 2008. Nothing else. No further obligations whatsoever.

As you can clearly see from the scores posted so far, Barrington Harvey has no issue with scores of below eight out of 10 being posted online. The Eurogamer review in questions caused “problems” in so much as it originally contained a couple of minor factual inaccuracies which, to its credit, the site has quickly rectified and addressed (without, quite rightly, changing the context of the review).

Any site, be it Gamespot or whoever, is entirely within their rights to post whatever score they want and no-one is under any sort of obligation to delay any review.

As an ex-journalist myself, I firmly believe in editorial integrity and the right to express an individual opinion. As an agency, we never – ever – make demands of the press in terms of awarding scores; at the end of the day, they are free to score as they wish.

Barrington Harvey has been working hard to ensure the launch scores of Tomb Raider Underworld are in line with our internal review predictions over the launch weekend – but to suggest that we can in some way “silence” reviews of the game is slightly overstating our influence.

If there is one thing PR firms know, it’s damage control.

Eidos UK PR firm: We are “not in the position of telling reviewers what they can and cannot say” [VG247]

In a note at the foot of the Gears of War 2 page, games editor Marc Doyle writes:

My advice for our faithful users is to focus your attention on the Metascore for this game and not the thousands of user votes, most of which have been submitted before said users have played the game. This is a gaming community, and if people want to stuff the ballot box, there’s not much I can do at this point. When we upgrade the registration requirements for participation on the site in the near future, this type of thing won’t happen. We’ll post the full legitimate user reviews upon the game’s release. As always, thanks for using the site.

In terms of just what they’ll be doing in terms of upgrading, Doyle tells 1UP that, as it stands, all a user needs to provide is an email address and they’re able to comment. In the near future, commenting will “require users to enter more information than just an e-mail address in order to get an account and vote on MetaCritic”, and users won’t be able to submit reviews until after a game hits store shelves.

Gears of War 2 [MetaCritic, via 1UP]