Tackling the mystery of low Wii review scores

by Chris Greenhough on Feb 12th 2008 10:00PM

Over at Next-gen, Matt Matthews has bravely penned the kind of article that could well see mobs of frothing fanboys beating a path to his door, torches and lynching gear in hand. In the piece, Matthews presents a statistical breakdown of average review scores for Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360, using numbers borrowed from Game Rankings.

As the resulting graph indicates, the Wii doesn't fare well with professional reviewers, but before you get all indignant and lathered up about this, Matthews attempts to explain why the Wii is suffering, and his conclusion is fairly interesting: that reviewers (and the industry as a whole) are still trying to understand the Wii. Before now, Matthews argues, the industry has been so heavily focused on assessing realism and technical achievements that they've largely forgotten how to evaluate how fun a game is.

What do you guys think? Agree? Politely disagree? Want him to die in a fire?

Source

Tags: gamerankings, graph

Reader Comments (56)

I can agree with the graph. While the Wii has a number of outstanding games, it also has a lot of crap!

Yeah, unfortunately, crap like "Ninjabread Man" and "Carnival Games" are ruining its reputation. Only release games if they're good!

Exactly!

The graph makes perfect sense if you look at it from the right perspective. The Wii is selling like hotcakes so developers are making shovelware by the masses in the hopes that simply the large number of Wii owners out there will = profit. And inversely the same holds true for PS3. It's got the smallest install base so developers only make a game for it if they think they can make a game good enough to grab the small user base's attention.

The crappy ports are weighing down the Wii. Compare first-party games and best-sellers and the like, and it's a totally different picture.

A little bit of crap, and a little bit of trouble reviewing.

I've seen Wii games get high marks for their controls, and low marks for the same controls.

I've also seen quite a number of games that deserve low scores.

I would be interested in seeing what the average scores are for the top 10 games for each platform.

I'm too lazy to do it for the top 10, but the top 5 using the scores from Metacritic are as follows:

Wii = 460 total = 92 average
PS3 = 456 total = 91.2 average
XBox360 = 474 total = 94.8 average

You may also be interested to know that how many games score 75 or above:

Wii = 26
PS3 = 63
XBox360 = 140

What this says to me is that whilst the Wii has some very good games (as shown by the first statistic), far too much of it is complete rubbish.

Hence the low scores.

Secret? Theres no secret when 3rd party companies are cashing in by shipping out PS2 ports with "Wii Party Game" features & leaving the game development to their weakest departments just to mass produce crap in order to cash in on Wii sales.

I cant understand why some establishment cant be developed by law to price titles produced based on quality. Its ridiculous to see how many games for the Wii are priced for $50. This is why I cant cry for Nintendo when it comes to modding systems.

No I'm pretty sure it's because the Wii became very popular very fast and all the developers said "Ooo quick profit!" and hurled idiotic ports and shovelware at it. I think they skip a lot of steps in making a quality game. Just look at Red Steel. Could have been great, but the controls sucked. Look at Spiderman 3! I loved Spiderman 2 on PS2, I spent hours just swinging around the city having fun. I couldn't even begin to enjoy it on the Wii because the graphics were absolutely appalling. A lot of games for the Wii get kicked out for a quick buck and then 3rd party developers wonder why Nintendo titles do so well. It's the polish stupid.

I don't care about the average game for any system. I care about greatness. I'll take Wii Smash Bros, Mario, and Kart over every PS3 game, combined.

My opinion:
360 - largely shooters, few games miss their intended audience. Games are rated for full content and are held to console standards. Filled with mainstream "hardcore" franchises: Madden, Halo, COD, racing etc

PS3 - some high-quality exclusives, with ports of the 360's best games. Lowest number of titles overall, therefore average isn't very revealing.

Wii - approaching or has the largest library. Combination of casual and hardcore titles risk missing their audience, as casual titles are often reviewed by hardcore gamers. Are often held to (subconscious?) standards of the other consoles, graphically and in depth. 3rd parties look to create low-budget titles, yet are held to high-budget expectations (WHO expects good graphics or story from a $20 game?).

Plain and simple, some of the Wii games are crap. But the largest problem I see is that the reviewers aren't approaching these games very objectively. One day you review COD4, the next No More Heroes. Both great games, but few rate them fairly. If you objectively segmented the Wii library into two groups, the group with Mario, Metriod, NMH, Z&W, etc would have an average much closer to that of the other platforms.

Amen, bro...amen...

vidGuy also sums up why I don't have a 360. "largely shooters... few games miss their intended audience." I hate trying to FPS with a controller, so I prefer my FPS's on PC. What's leftover on 360 after you remove shooters is not much of interest.

Top 20 Games Average Score (by Metacritic)

360 - 90.9
PS3 - 86.95
Wii - 83.1

Top 10 Games Average Score (by Metacritic)

360 - 93.4
PS3 - 89.1
Wii - 88

I don't put much stock into review scores unless they're really low (below 50%). Reviewers never seem to see eye-to-eye with my opinion at all. Halo 3 scored 10's, and I thought it was crap. I mean it was OK technically... but like 99% of shooters, it's nothing new and has terrible sluggish controls (as usual for Halo). A lot of shooters get high scores but they're just ho-hum to me. "Oh, in this game I'm in WW2 shooting Nazi's... AGAIN."

I know I'm a minority, but I thought Super Mario Galaxy was just alright. Maybe a 7.5, not 9-10 like a lot of reviews gave it. Ratchet & Clank was a much better platformer. On the other hand Metroid Corruption got way too low of scores. I thought it deserved at least 9's across the board. It was the first time I felt comfortable playing a FPS on console.... amazing controls.

If you like MP3, may I suggest MoH H2...Sure its another WW2 game, but I like only use the Wi-Fi...

Seeing the constant flow of craptacular games come in to my store (ol' Best Buy), I agree with the chart. We have four 4' sections (those baskets hung up on the grates) of games at my store for Wii games, and I'd safely say 70% of them are utter garbage. Just got a new horse game in. Seriously, what the crap is this, NES-era relived?

Come on, people, that green light is going to burn out sooner or later, so start conserving it for games that actually matter.

Cheaper and easier development for the Wii combined with a whole crop of users who are new to the game and haven't been burned by shovelware before and there's a huge market for shovelware, so there is a bunch of crappy games.

Simple, the games do suck; whether you realize it or not. Only good games: Zelda, super Mario galaxy, and SSBB. Thats it. Those are also made by Nintendo, the wii doesn't have 1 good 3rd party published game, and probably never will. I own a 360 and a Wii, and the problem with 360 is that it has too many good games. The exact opp. goes for the Wii. As for Publishers, there is nothing for them to adjust to except for the controls, the console offers no power to do anything else. Don't get me wrong, I do love the Wii, (especially the Big 3 i mentioned) but its games plain suck.

It's comments like this that make me realize our country is filled with idiots.

Zack and Wiki, Endless Ocean, No More Heroes, and Rayman are just a few of my favorite games i can think of for the wii that are NOT made by nintendo.

and to be totally honest with you.. you are missing quite a few 1st party games that are great. Metroid is a bit miss on your list.

i think it's always great to see how much hate a system gets when it's popular. I seem to remember seeing the same sort of ignorant crap thrown at the ps2 in it's hayday.

Technically Endless Ocean was Nintendo pub, Arika dev. But even then, you've got stuff like Fatal Frame IV, Monster Hunter 3, and the new ToS game in the pipe

The good 3rd party content is coming up quick.

You know, I never really thought about it before. I just took what reviewers were saying as truth (only 1st party games are good on Wii). But actually, now I realize that most of my favorite games are 3rd party.

I know better games will come out later. I have trouble picking out games on the wii. I love RE4 and found it more enjoyable for the wii, but didn't like games like Metroid, SMG, and Zack and wiki, all of which had high scores.

I'm just waiting for the next big game right now. At the moment I don't have much of an interest in what's currently on the market.

Get Super Smash Bros Melee. It's probably going to be the best Nintendo game of its time!

Wii only has 2 games that are appealing to me. SSBB and Mario Galaxy. Not enough to make it a great system. Its nice for non-gamers, but right now there just aren't any good games for it aside from Nintendo games. Sadly, this looks like how it will be in the future as well.

oh, and his defense I don't agree with. I've played enough games on the wii to realize the new hardware is used gimmickaly when applied to most of the games, even ones released by nintendo. I tried to have fun, after a while it felt like I was pretending to have fun. It's easier for me to jump into a game for the 360.

IMO the best controls and funnest controls so far that I've played would have to be Resident Evil 4.

Also, IKY says stuff like they are fact. Those three games he mentioned aren't the only good ones. Funny they all be nintendo. Capcom has released at least 3 pretty decent games.. one of them I haven't played yet, but it being like house of the dead I think I'll like it.

Average top ten on gamerankings:

360 - 93.27%
PS3 - 88.96%
Wii - 87.56%

Honestly, that's pretty close. Must first thought was definitely that Wii just has a lot of crap at the bottom screwing up the average.

But Matthews might have a point about Wii games not matching up to the bullet points review scores sometime boil down to. Wii Sports has a gamerankings score of 76%! For a game that's almost universally loved by anyone that plays it, from young to old, that's odd.

I can see how you could justify, say, Gears of War, getting 17 points higher in the context of your average game review. Because the people that would say Gears of War is a 20% better game than Wii Sports are the type that would be writing the reviews. But, you know there are a lot more people out in the world at large that would vastly prefer Wii Sports.

Still trying to understand the system? Puhleaze.

Controls and graphics both play a part in review scores. Simple.

The Wii controls are, in general, poor. Is that a hardware failure? A software failure? BOTH? The general fact is: if the same game is released on all systems, the controls on the Wii version tend to suffer. (Despite the initial novelty I experienced, I believe the Wii control scheme ... well, sucks.)

As for graphics, not even a question - the PS3 and 360 blow it away. But I'm sure most reviewers don't count graphics as anywhere near important as controls.

Not to mention some of the titles on the Wii are just plain ... can you say "let's make a buck"?

The review scores are lower. And frankly, they should be.

Guess we disagree here; Wii controls are easily better than a traditional pad when done right (see SMG, MP3:C, hell even Tiger Woods in spots). And graphics play a big part in a lot of reviews, sometimes given large paragraphs worth of consideration.

I agree with both of you actually.

Some developers may just want to make a game for the top dog, but see the Wii controls as an "obstacle", while others will see the controls as innovative. I think both traditional controllers and the Wii controls are suited well to specific purposes.

Not all games would be best suited for the Wii controls (like God of War or SSBB), yet others will really shine with Wii controls (like RRR, Wii Sports), and still others will seemingly be cumbersome but actually turn out stronger (like Geometry Wars--aiming with IR is definitely superior, to my surprise).

I find it weird that, despite the wii getting such crappy shovelware/bloatware, the wii sold more units in a year than the gamecube sold in it's six years. Now tell me, what would this indicate? Good marketing? Yes. But two things need to be done; one - more SNES RPGs on the virtual console and two - cut down on the shovelware. Either way, I'm really enjoying the wii!

it's the 3rd party crap. not the reviews.

this one is going to keep dividing up people i think.

It all comes down the the reviewers, and although there are a few wii games that deserved highers scores on gamerankings alot of wii games (the lower end ones ports and popcron arcarde games) are all total shovelware or half arse attempts to cash in quickly

this means that the average score does drop smewhat below what you would expect. The wii does have amny really good games (mario galaxy, mario strikers charged, zack and wiki, wii sports, lego star wars, geometory wars, paper mario, batalion wars,metroid, tomb raider anaversary, no more heroes and so on and so on) So for every good decent game we seem to get 4 or 5 rubbish games its unfortunate but that drags the overall score down.

Now dont get me wrong here im not stating if all the shovel ware wasnt taken into consideration the wii woudl be on top of that graph im not im just stating their % woudl be higher for good games. Alot of publishers have struggled bringing games to the wii but they seem to get getting the hang of it now and hopefully this year will herald alot more good games.

When you have less games on a system (IE: ps3) of course scores are going to be generally higher. You have less rushed games coming out for it as the people who invest in that system know that in order to make money, it has to have some sort of quality. the Wii is like the ps2, in the fact that many companies think they can shovelware the system to death and make millions of dollars. I think the Wii and the PS2 are very similar in that way. But it doesnt mean that either system isn't worth owning because there are several dozen (hundred? lol) bad games for it that weight it down. Most gamers know which games to avoid anyway, and I'm sure anyone will tell you the good games for both of those systems that have come out as of this date make buying the system a no brainer. As far as the Wii goes, I'm on my 23rd game. It's by far the most I've ever invested in a system in the first year I've owned one new, and I think that speaks for the large amount of great games to play for the thing despite the dozens of games on it that should never have seen the light of day.

Die in a fire? You read my mind!!

In no way am I defending the amount of bad games being released for Wii by saying this, but remember, you can always ignore sucky games. For how often I find myself playing Wii (my only console of this generation), the amount of quality titles is perfectly sufficient. And, it's about to get one greater with Brawl in less than a month.

"the industry has been so heavily focused on assessing realism and technical achievements that they've largely forgotten how to evaluate how fun a game is"

Too true. I've been using this argument on my PS-loving friends for months now. They're so hung up on the 1080 number they've forgotten the reason for playing. I certainly don't feel visually slighted playing Wii on my 61" TV. Maybe that component connector makes a bigger difference than I thought. ;)

I don't agree with the graph (I think 70% are good), but I can agree that some reviewers can't realize that a controller that makes you stand up can be fun. They just need an open mind. But those are just my thoughts.

In a nutshell the top Wii games will always get great reviews because Nintendo's top games will always be the best around whatever the hardware. After all the Wii currently has the highest rated game of this generation with Mario Galaxy (average of 97%) and the likes of Twilight Princess and Metroid Prime 3 aren't far behind. But other than that a depressingly large number of Wii games are absolute shite with awful controls and awful graphics. Plus the Wii-centric games like Wii Sports and Wii Play are never going to get great reviews because they aren't great games, good certainly, but not great.

I remember a reviewer who gave a game a low score because he couldn't figure out the controls. They weren't that difficult to learn.

I think Nintendo shifted while many gamers/reviewers are stuck in the another mindset. Even the "average" good games, like ExciteTruck, Elebits and NiGHTS, to me are much more interesting than the "established" same-controls, same-gameplay games that the "next-gen" systems have.

Dead Rising is still the only thing I'd want to play on 360 (hoping it comes to PC) that's ONLY on 360 and not PC.

Basically I was pretty burned out on games until the DS and then Wii came along. I just don't like where the mainstream industry is going, gameplay and game structure wise. I'll take the unpolished-but-creative look of NiGHTS over a new-but-stale FPS.

"I just don't like where the mainstream industry is going, gameplay and game structure wise. I'll take the unpolished-but-creative look of NiGHTS over a new-but-stale FPS."

Here here!

Here here? Where Where?

The correct usage is "hear, hear"

Data Design Interactive.
It's the company responsible for Anubis 2, Ninjabread Man, as well as a whole slew of crappy Wii games. Companies like this one are flooding the Wii library with shovelware barely worth a buck fifty. These games are laden with bugs, offer often less than an hour in total play time and are just generally botched, half baked projects with bottom of the barrel production values.

These games get awful scores and they deserve it. So that drives the Wii average down a peg. What's worst is that most games that use the Wiimote motion controls do so very poorly. Even Wii Sports Boxing can't seem to detect what it is you're doing most of the time.

Wiimote movement should be treated as an extra button by developers, not as some sort of deeply immersive new control scheme. It doesn't work right. Admit it already!

Well I'll agree with everyone else...
The Wii has crap loads of shovelware + ps2 ports...basically the same thing....
And the reviewers are all gamers, so when they get something different that doesn't appeal to them they rank it up next to something that does like halo 3, instead of putting on it's own an rating it for what it is.

wii has an unbelievably huge amount of horrifically awful, contrived, garbage, terribly designed trash games. it's pathetic. that's the reason.

zzzzzzzzzzzzingg...but yeah, it doesn't seem like its a mystery at all. a fair amount of the games are crap. its like the Mystery of Poor Crtical Reception for Matrix Revolutions...

haha yea that was a tough one to figure out. could it be because...matrix online was so terrible it made you want to vomit out of your eyes? maybe that's why it did poorly. hmmmm!!!!

have ya seen the games coming out on wii? how many games where i learn how to train a cat do i need people? i don't need eight GOLF games. i demand no more gamez aboutz animalz! NO MORE!

If you look at Metroid, Super Mario Galaxy, Zelda, No More Heroes, you'll see that they're rated highly across the board. Almost 10's. But then with all the crap third party I think it really hurts the average. Especially with a lack of incoming games.

Lack?

What calendar are you looking at?

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Tackling the mystery of low Wii review scores

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