Comments on: XBLA, PSN, and WiiWare Quality Analysis

By: Riley Cooper

Riley Cooper — Wed, 12 May 2010 12:44:35 +0000

I easily get addicted to PSP games and i am always updated with the newest PSP games in town.~’~

By: Make Rap Beats Online

Make Rap Beats Online — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:00:19 +0000

Make Rap Beats Online…

First of all, I think it’ s great that you have created this forum. I have really enjoyed reading the comments of all of the participants– they are insightful the disagreements are respectfully expressed and add so much depth to the discussion. Also, I…

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:31:49 +0000

All my friends tell me I need to get BF 1943… now only if they’d buy it for me.

By: work at home

work at home — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 07:27:18 +0000

Very good work, interesting post, bookmarked !

By: zoom

zoom — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 11:30:38 +0000

Opinion shmopinion – you were the one making authoratative statements about quality, falling back on ‘opinion’ now is a ridiculous copout – especially given that the aim of the article is to *quantify* opinions. Sheesh. There isn’t anything that makes Tetris Party somehow indictative of reviewer kid gloves when it comes to Wiiware. To act as if it’s just obviously a worse game than Puzzle Fighter or Puzzle Quest (or any of the other games on that list) is laughable, and generating some general rule a single game – you refuse to offer more examples – is psychotic. Tetris Splash was a barebones entry – it’s possible it was *underrated*, but it says nothing about Tetris Party, which is a much better version, no matter how you try to underplay it.
Finally, over half of the games on the 360 list are do-overs of ex-retail games. So you’re not sticking to your rules. PS3 and Wiiware have more original content in the top 20. I can understand not counting Virtual Console games/XB Originals/Playstation Classics because they have no new content at all, but it’s also worth pointing out that the distinction is narrow and technical.

By: jasoncross

jasoncross — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 21:50:13 +0000

Oh, nothing here is “proof.” You can’t “prove” an opinion. You’re confusing “proof” with “example.” No, I’m not asking you to “accept without question” Puzzle Quest or Peggle or Rez are better games than Tetris Party. It’s an opinion about the relative merits of WiiWare titles compared to PSN and XBLA. You are encouraged to have your own opinion. Neither of us will be correct or incorrect.

I’m merely expressing my opinion that many WiiWare games get scored more highly by critics (not me! not you! Critics reviewing the games!) than games of similar quality on PSN or XBLA. I think they get reviewed relative to other WiiWare games, and there haven’t been enough stellar WiiWare titles yet to “raise the bar” for that platform.

By: zoom

zoom — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 08:17:09 +0000

“Methinks thou doth protest too much, sir!” Well you would wouldn’t you! But really, to pick out that one rating as if it were a pattern and use it to ‘prove’ how Wiiware is getting an easy ride when pretty much every other rating on that lists seems ~ right (ie. Wiiware is mostly composed of junkware and the top-rated games reflect that) – come *on*, Jason. It was just a lazy argument and an absurd reach in an otherwise fastidious-to-the-point-of-not-even-being-interesting article. It stuck out. Of ALL the things you suddenly decide to lose your faith in Metacritic over … that’s it? It’s just peculiar that we’re asked to accept without question that Puzzle Quest and Peggle and Rez are all better games than a fully fleshed-out version of Tetris with some pretty creative and even demented game modes. So what else is overrated there? Presumably you take issue with *many* of those scores. So let’s go. What is Jason Cross’ World of Goo score? 89? Orbient gets what? 75? I just want to know!

By: jasoncross

jasoncross — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 06:12:10 +0000

There’s no need for name calling. My fanboy is showing? Methinks thou dost protest too much, sir!

And yes, Tetris Party is a fine game. It’s good. But an 86 puts it in pretty rarefied air on the other lists, ahead of plenty of other games.
Take Tetris Splash. Yes, it’s a worse downloadable Tetris game than Tetris Party is, but not terribly worse. It gets a 53 on metacritic. Yes, Tetris Party has more stuff to do and is definitely a better game, but 86 to 53 better?

And no, my goal was not to compare every downloadable game on all platforms. It is to compare games available in XBLA, PSN, and WiiWare, not downloadable versions of retail games. Sorry if that was unclear. It’s almost impossible to really compare things like Xbox Originals because you can’t separate out reviews of the game today as a download title form reviews when it was a new Xbox game (where it was judged quite differently).

By: zoom

zoom — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 05:26:47 +0000

This is kind of pathetic, Jason. Tetris party is one of the better implementations of a classic game – to single it out for dismissal like while giving SotN/Rez/Ikaruga/SSF2T and frigging Puzzle Quest a pass is … highly questionable. Then going further and claiming your cherrypicked example just shows Wiiware games in general are not only worse on average, they’re also *overrated* … that is insane. Your fanboy is showing. Also, there are better games than Tetris Party on ALL of those lists that don’t rate as high. Don’t cry because your favourite XBox games got rated lower – it just shows how arbitrary Metacritic score are and how they shouldn’t be taken seriously at all let alone ‘analysed’.

Also, if, as you said on Qt3, the goal was to compare all games on the download services without considering whether they were new or not – it seems exceedingly strange to ignore older games like XBox orginals and Virtual Console releases, which would change the ranking considerably.

By: jasoncross

jasoncross — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 04:25:29 +0000

Hard to say. Certainly there are more games on XBLA than PSN or WiiWare. I think there may be more games on PSN than WiiWare, but I haven’t counted.