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MontanaHatchet on 14 June 2009
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Grampy said:
MontanaHatchet said:
You can't really prove a point by cherrypicking a bunch of examples, although I suppose you can try. If you remember grade school math, you should know that calculating a mean or average is usually the best measure of central tendency, UNLESS there are exceptional outliers. The main reason the PS3 and 360 averages have fallen lately is that summer time is usually the time of crappy licensed games. See: Terminator Salvation, Leisure Suit Larry, Wheelman, Watchmen, etc.

The Wii has these types of games in bulk too, but unfortunately, the developers who made mediocre videogame versions of mediocre movies decided to make them HD exclusive. Hopefully they'll learn when they have quarterly losses of millions again. If they're going to make crappy games, they should at least put them on all platforms.

As I see it, the complete rather than recent ratings are still far more telling.

Taking a current COMPLETE Metacritic List which covers all games since the first of March (unless your summer starts very early) is NOT cherry picking. Nor is criticizing the fact that it didn't include every game ever written, since the clear intent of the article was to show change and improvement. I freely admitted in the first sentence that things used to be dismal.

I also admitted that the average was impacted by whatever games of whatever quality that were published, including ones that never should have been. But it is disingenuous to pretend that this in some way benefitted the Wii. It is the console that has attracted far more than its share of crapware.

My only point is that there is a very near equality in average Metacritic scores over the games of the last 3 1/2 months and that the Wii has competed well in games that were released on all three. Those are true and I think valid points.

To dismiss it as a summer thing and cherry picking is, in my opinion, borderline trolling, and not the quality of input I have always respected you for.

I didn't know summer began in March, but I see why you'd start there. Showing chance and improvement would probably include, I dunno, past data? That's generally how you show change over time. If you simply say "things used to be dismal" and show no evidence of statistics other than a cluster of recent data, than you're not showing real change. You're showing what could very well be a coincidence. I doubt that the recent upswing in Wii ratings is just a coincidence (developers are finally giving the Wii some respect), but for all we know, it could be.

When I mentioned that crap was bringing down the averages for the consoles, I gave attention to outliers. Both the PS3 and 360 got the Leisure Suit Larry game, which scored way lower than anything on the Wii. Things like that skew the data because from what I've seen myself, that one game is much lower than any other games released recently on the HD consoles (even Damnation). I'm not trolling whatsoever, and I don't see how you expect "better" from me. You barely even know me. Maybe you've seen my posts, but for all you know, I could be a three-eyed goblin. Point is that there needs to be a broader range of data for comparison.