The Gradient of Critic's Scores

[Crevalle]

It has always seemed to me that there are a disproportionate number of "A" grades within the Xbox 360 reviews, but to test this, I would have to compare it's percentage of A's to the rest of the consoles on this site. I'm an analyst by profession, and it bugged me not knowing. So, I took 20 minutes or so and mapped-out what percentage of A- to A+ grades were received (with reasonable accuracy) for each console--below are the results (in descending order), which corroborate my initial intuition:

Console % A- to A+
Xbox 360 39%
Atari XEGS 38%
Virtual Boy 36%
Intellivision 31%
Super NES 30%
ColecoVision 30%
Atari 5200 29%
3DO 27%
Odyssey 2 24%
NES 24%
N64 24%
Playstation 23%
Dreamcast 21%
Turbografx-16 21%
Neo Geo 20%
Atari 7800 20%
Saturn 20%
Genesis 20%
Master System 19%
Jaguar 18%
Sega 32X 18%
Gamecube 18%
PS2 16%
Atari 2600 15%
Vectrex 15%
Sega CD 11%
Xbox 11%
Philips CD-I 10%

I was surprised to see Virtual Boy and 3DO near the top of the list. Anyway, just a little exercise I did yesterday.

[ActRaiser1]

I think you'll see the percentage for the 360 drop as more games get released/reviewed.  Look at the PS2.  It's probably got more games than any other system and ranks near the bottom. 

[Alienblue]

I agree, these numbers don't mean much because the older systems have a zillion more games then the brand new ones. If a system only has 8 games and 6 are A+ or A- , it's 75% ! But wait until lots of dogs start getting released. It's silly to see the Odyssey2 way up over the Genesis and atari 2600, but that's because there are less than 100 O2 games and HUNDREDS of them on 2600 and Genesis, so of course many are going to be pretty bad. Also, people tend to be more leiniant on first generation software. Altered Beast was an A+ game when it CAME OUT, but doesn't touch that grade today, with much better Genny side scrollers out there.

More interesting, statistically, would be the number of C and better games a system has; although it still would not mean the system wasn't GOOD. 2600 has tons of both F's and A's!

[a1]

Also, I'd imagine that with a new system the Critic would buy the games he had heard good things about. Why would he buy a brand new 360 just to play crappy games?

[Crevalle]

[QUOTE=a]Also, I'd imagine that with a new system the Critic would buy the games he had heard good things about. Why would he buy a brand new 360 just to play crappy games?
[/QUOTE]

Do you own a 360? Just curious, because the launch games are generally regarded as weak. The games reviewed aren't even the cream-of-the-crop either (ie. he has not yet reviewed the top five rated 360 games on Gamespot--Oblivion, GoW, GRAW, TC:RSV).

Anyway, this isn't a veiled "attack" on the critic--I just thought it was interesting. Especially King Kong getting an A-. Regardless, he's just added three new 360 title that faired poorly.

[a1]

[QUOTE=Crevalle][QUOTE=a]Also, I'd imagine that with a new system the Critic would buy the games he had heard good things about. Why would he buy a brand new 360 just to play crappy games?
[/QUOTE]

Do you own a 360? Just curious, because the launch games are generally regarded as weak. The games reviewed aren't even the cream-of-the-crop either (ie. he has not yet reviewed the top five rated 360 games on Gamespot--Oblivion, GoW, GRAW, TC:RSV).

Anyway, this isn't a veiled "attack" on the critic--I just thought it was interesting. Especially King Kong getting an A-. Regardless, he's just added three new 360 title that faired poorly.[/QUOTE]

He grades games as compared to the other games on the console. So while King Kong may get an A- compared to the launch 360 games, it may get a B- if he graded it for PS2. I don't own a 360 and I see that he hasn't actually graded the best games; I was just giving my guesses as to why the ratio was different.

[VideoGameCritic]

I think the price of games plays a major factor in that high 360 percentage.  In a system's first year, the prices for its games tends to be very high ($60 in this case), so I generally only buy the games I know are going to kick ass. 

As the console ages however, the prices come down and I can then "take some chances" with some lesser-known titles.  Of course, the chances of these games being below average are much better, so the scores gradually drop.

In theory, I like to think that if I reviewed every game for a system, the average grade would be about a C.

[chrisbid1]

that brings up a good question, do you consider price when you grade games?

[VideoGameCritic]

[QUOTE=chrisbid]that brings up a good question, do you consider price when you grade games? [/QUOTE]

Ideally, I don't think an objective critic should take the price into account.  After all, if someone's reading the review five years from now, the prices could be totally different, and I don't want my reviews to age poorly.

On the other hand, I think I would definitely give a game the benefit of the doubt if its price were reasonable.  For example, if I was teetering between a C- or C, I'd probably give the game a C if it were really cheap.

[chrisbid1]

when buying games, i do not purchasing 'average' games that pique my interest if the price is say under 15 dollars. the burger king games are the perfect example, at 4 bucks a piece, i frankly believe they are essential. they couldve been a hell of a lot worse than they turned out to be.