LaughingTarget

The idea of a review score is to compare. The idea of a school score is to determine individual competency. Consumerism by nature is comparison. By signifying everything 60 and below as a terrible game, we are not doing anyone any favors with the review.

Game reviews simply cannot be treated like school grade because they simply are not objective in nature. Does a 67% from a review site mean:

A - The game was measured and can be mathematically determined that the game is only 67% complete?

B - Does the 67% mean the game is better than 67% of all comparable games on the market?

C - A completely arbitrary and meaningless number.

A isn't the answer. Even measuring bugs and other QA problems would not be able to result in a solid number, and that is only from a technical standpoint. In most cases, the game is 100% complete, so that is out the window.

B doesn't make much sense either. How can a site average in the mid-70's then? Are all games on average better than 70% of the rest?


C is the only logical explanation. The 67% means absolutely nothing. The reason there is even a debate on review score inflation is because the numbers are arbitrary and meaningless. If a review score system is properly utilized, the site's scores should average around the 50% mark. That means if there are 10 games, then each game has a unique score of 1-10. That means that no matter how good those 10 games may be, another game in the bunch is better or worse.

The game scored 1 may, theoretically be a great game, but why should the consumer buy it over the one scored at 10? The company that made the 10 game clearly did a better job, so why didn't #1 do the same?

Review sites currently operate under an unlimited resource model. Since half or more titles rank at 70 or above on most sites, this says we should be buying half or more of all the games on the market. As gamers, this system does not do us any favors. Review sites are meant to be consumer-centric, and should give opinions of which titles should be purchased, and in which order, to best factor in differing income levels.

A merely competent game, nothing amazing yet nothing particularly bad in comparison to everything on the market, should be rated a 50%. Half the games are better, half the games are worse. 50% makes perfect sense as it means it is better than half the games on the market. Most review sites would register a 50% as plauge-worthy. If the game is pretty good, but you've played better, it may get a 60%. 60% on most sites still means the title is bad.

The current individual merit system is worthless to consumers. True, two similar games may get identical scores on individual merit of, say, 92%, but which one should I buy? If I knew the site treated the score as a percentile, then I would know it is a coin flipper. However, since I know review outlets don't do that, I can't tell which is a better purchase.

Review sites need to average close to 50%. If every game were reviewed, logic states that the average should be 50%. This 70-100 system with everything 69 and under being crap doesn't do me much good.

Joe P. -

Sony is playing by Microsoft's rules. The PS3 is proof of this. Had Sony gone with their old method, creating a cheap console for the masses, this discussion wouldn't even exist. Did they make billions on the PS1 and PS2? Yes, they did. Will they make billions on the PS3? No, they won't. Sony will be thankful to break even in 5 years (R&D costs, manufacturing costs, *free* Live-style service).

Sony cannot win a war of attrition. Sony is not a strong company and has their fingers in too many pies that draw losses. Big does not always mean powerful. Sony may be a large company, but Sony fighting Microsoft is like taking a Yamato-class battleship and trying to punch it out with the USS George H.W. Bush Nimitz class carrier launched two weeks ago. The Yamato is a bigger ship with huge guns, but it won't stand a chance against a carrier with a full complement of F-22 fighters and advanced radar. Plus, theoretically running the Yamato class would be far more expensive today than running a nuclear powered Nimiz carrier.

Sony was better off sticking with submarines. Cheaper, less flashy, but powerful if used right and can sink the big, bad carrier real quick.

Sony got suckered into the battle of the bankroll with Microsoft. It is acceptable for MS to lose a huge chunk of change in the first two or even three generations to penetrate and control a market. It is not acceptable for a market leader, Sony, to take huge losses on an established product. There isn't any market to penetrate, they have it already.

Sony's choice to go with a state of the art behemoth, the PS3, was a major mistake. If Sony developed an affordable machine that undercut the 360 but wasn't as pretty to look at, or basically repeat the PS2 vs Xbox battle, they'd be in a great position, having launched already and building a nice customer base.

However, Sony didn't, and is now trying to out-spend Microsoft. Sony can't do that. They simply are not healthy enough to match wits with a far stronger company that almost grows money out of nowhere. Sony's equivelant of Microsoft's Windows and Office (ie a near monopolistic control of the market) IS the Playstation division. Microsoft can always fall back on Windows to cover up the losses of the 360 and this new project. Sony doesn't have a way to recoup the losses of the PS3 to keep the company strong.

GameFly - the most economically conservative way to go.

Wow, the voice acting is bad.

This isn't going to be a major problem. The average PS2 owner only had 6 games over the 5 years it existed, and if each takes up 4 gigs of space, that is 24 gigs total. This is assuming that the owner doesn't sell or exchange games and actually keeps each year's rendition of Madden.

The only issue arises when the hardcore crowd wants more than 15 titles (or the 30+ required per PS3 to make it profitable), and regularly plays 16 or more titles. Simply not a problem. 60 gigs is a lot of space and the vast majority of PS3 owners are not going to use it for multimedia functions. They won't use it to play BluRay, they won't store MP3s on it, they'll use it to play games and nothing more. And that same vast majority may never own more than 6 PS3 tities. The PS3 will have ample space, even with the smaller 20 gig model (17 if they do the same thing as the 360, which is something I assume they will).

This isn't sloppy programming. Loading off the disk bites, no matter how fast it is. The CD/DVD/BluRay loading times can never compare to the loading times of a good hard drive.

60 gigs is a lot of space. A cursory examination of my HD shows I have 86 gigs used, and there are 5 games I'm not playing and an entire Bleach anime folder that needs to be moved to a burnable DVD eating up 25 gigs of space. Regular Joe consumer won't use it all up and will have ample space until their PS3 is sent to the scrap heap for a PS4.

Yes, because we all know that yellow, teal, green, and purple guys with skull paint are totally racist.

My comment wasn't sarcasm. While I do agree this isn't Ferrell's best movie, I still love the stupid comedy. Give me Beerfest over high-brow stuff.

OS Perry -

Make that 4 exclusives. Full Auto 2 is a different title than the Full Auto on the 360. It is a sequel.

I kinda want the PS3 at launch now, I loved that movie, and getting it a month early...I dunno, going to be tough ignoring the PS3 for a year.

Steve2 -

Which only validates my claim that HDMI is useless. Sony and Hitachi are artificially limiting the resolution on the cable. Not surprising, as well, both companies are solidly entrenched in BluRay. They want to make damned sure that VGA doesn't become a competing standard, and are going to make sure that HDMI, their baby, gets all the attention. If they have to neuter the VGA output to do this, they will.

I'm not saying you don't know what you're talking about, but you are being fed the Kool-Aid Sony is passing around. HDMI is around ONLY because of the ICT, not because it is inherently superior. Sony's manual is doing a good job of fooling you into thinking VGA is an inferior technology. Crazy given PCs output a far higher resolution than 1080p over the "inferior" VGA cables.

All this tells me, as someone who will end up owning both a PS3 and will want to take advantage of any 1080p content (upscaled or native), that I should avoid any television manufactured by a BluRay supporter. Toshiba televisions, an HD-DVD supporter, doesn't limit their VGA outputs, so I know for certain that if I get their televisions, I can use VGA for the 360 and, because they usually only have one VGA input, HDMI for the PS3, and neither of them have their balls cut off.

Furthermore, by reading the Home Theater article on which televisions are capable of Deinterlacing and the 3:2 Cadence, the big winner Panasonic has full VGA resolutions as well (also, not surprising, Panasonic is an HD-DVD supporter). VGA is just as good as HDMI...as long as you don't buy your TV from a BluRay supporter.