My my, that was certainly an insightful post.

What red Pro controller?! 

What you personally think is totally different thing, we have scores like proof what more objectively is better. Yes Sony has more exclusives (that actualy isnt strange becuse its few years on market so has stronger support and is was 2 monts more on market than Switch this year,), but Nintendo has higher quality exclusives so far, Zelda BotW and Mario Odyssey will be above everything Sony had this year despite fact that PS4 will have tons of games this year. Also from games you mentioned only two are Sony games, so Nintendo definitely easily beate Sony in quality of games for this year.

Well, there's nothing to concern yourself yourself with this year, but you might want to hunker down in a bunker next year... 

And hopefully they don't make handhelds mainstream. I still prefer my couch box home theatre computer disc playing disco stand in Roku clone consoles and the overpowered processors with traditional hard drives. It would kill me to see everything become a tablet with optional controls... 

Bullshit argument.

There's nothing objective about metacritic scores. It's just the average of a sample set of the numerical scores a group of writers gave games they reviewed based on their own subjective opinions. If you're going off review scores, all you're doing is valuing a certain group's opinions above others, nothing more.

But just because it's the closest thing we can get to making opinions objective doesnt mean the result is objective, it's just less subjective in some ways.

So 100 critics, some of which are actual journalists with degrees who are passionate about video games, or passionate game fans who got their start writing walkthroughs with no actual education in the matter.... are now experts?

By your list of what makes video game reviewers experts:

Most of them have played games for a long time. I've been playing games for clost to three decades
Some of them are former developers. I've got close to a decade of console game development under my belt.
Some of them worked for Nintendo or Sony or MS. I did work on a couple of would-be first party titles that never got released for one of those companies, and I've worked directly with all three of them.

Looks like I'm an expert! How about you ask me about my opinion on Breath of the Wild? :P

Here, I'll let Guru Larry remind you of a few examples of why you're talking out of your ass:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKNs_4OZQzk

Look, you can trust that the specifics of certain reviewers can be indicate whether or not it's likely you will enjoy a game based on whether or not you agree with their previous opinions about games you like and don't like. That's pretty much it.

Scores are objective now?

His opinion of Sony having higher quality exclusives is then invalid because you think Zelda and Mario Odyssey (not even released yet) are better?

you can't make this shit up xD

Sony = VR

MS = Most Powerful Console

Nintendo = Hybrid Home console + Handheld

Everyone is doing their own thing. 

Oh please, over 100 critics can review a single game. It's beyond just a ''group of writers'' as you stated. Those are supposed to be the top experts in the industry, some of them are making a living out of this. Expertise comes off of skill and knowledge, know-how. Most of them have played games for a long time. Some of them are former developers, some of them are former business representatives, some of them worked for Nintendo or Sony or MS.

Yes, we're valuing a certain ''elite'' opinion amongst others, just like we value journalism or medical expertise. Because most of the time, they know best. How are we supposed to evaluate a game's quality anyway, according to your so-called argument? With our own point of view? Because it still brings up the issue of subjectivity. Your point leads nowhere, or you'll have to explain me how you can sell your game's quality to the masses without valuing that ''group's opinions'' above other.

Well we can't really escape subjectivity, after all. It taints most of what we do in our daily lives. But we can come close of weeding out the extremely subjective reviews, by referencing ourselves to an average.

And let it be known that the Metacritic aggregator weights averages, as stated on their website: ''Metascore is a weighted average in that we assign more importance, or weight, to some critics and publications than others, based on their quality and overall stature. In addition, for music and movies, we also normalize the resulting scores (akin to "grading on a curve" in college), which prevents scores from clumping together. We carefully curate a large group of the world’s most respected critics, assign scores to their reviews, and apply a weighted average to summarize the range of their opinions.''

Usually, we can agree that the more stature and reputation a critic has, the more rigorous and strict should be its review rules. It should be observing the harshest of evaluation process in order to uphold the magazine or website's reputation. That means, ruling out the fakes and the sensationalists.

Woah there, I didn't intend to list here what makes an expert an expert. I would have to do my research, but that was beside my point.

Did you get your accreditation? Did you make a request for official certification with said aggregators? Have the official authorities delievered your enfranchisement status? These are the first steps before being considered anything in regard of professional critic.

I think you're reaching, here. If you wanna rethink the whole review process of the business - go ahead, be my guest. I started off making a demonstration of what objectivity means, and how appeal to authority can be considered a valid argument in this case. You're pushing this far to try and win this argument - and I would appreciate more marks of respect on your part by no trashing me with statements like ''Talking out of my ass'', as if I was making up unfounded claims. Honestly, you could have every quality to be a reviewer yourself, just get yourself started and get an accreditation.

Yep, scores are objective... because reviewers are professional... even that girl that said she didn't liked racing games so she would give GT5 a 4/10 because the games was about running around a circuit.

Sony is much more than VR.

Yes it is very objective... just like when we analyse games here and people will say "But WiiU isn't much weaker than PS4 and OBJECTIVELY graphical comparison between Mario 3D world show it as better than The Last of Us because of art direction". Yes they all make objective claims.

Metacritic at most serves as needle to separe on "very bad" "worth playing" and "very good"... and several times it even fails that.

Way to shift the goal post... to a way that only the opinion you have matters.

So 100 critics, some of which are actual journalists with degrees who are passionate about video games, or passionate game fans who got their start writing walkthroughs with no actual education in the matter.... are now experts?

By your list of what makes video game reviewers experts:

Most of them have played games for a long time. I've been playing games for clost to three decades
Some of them are former developers. I've got close to a decade of console game development under my belt.
Some of them worked for Nintendo or Sony or MS. I did work on a couple of would-be first party titles that never got released for one of those companies, and I've worked directly with all three of them.

Looks like I'm an expert! How about you ask me about my opinion on Breath of the Wild? :P

Here, I'll let Guru Larry remind you of a few examples of why you're talking out of your ass:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKNs_4OZQzk

Look, you can trust that the specifics of certain reviewers can be indicate whether or not it's likely you will enjoy a game based on whether or not you agree with their previous opinions about games you like and don't like. That's pretty much it.

I don't even understand your contribution here, in this debate. You should scroll back a few pages behind, I merely answered setsunatenshi in the first place.

Now we're getting in an argument with potato_hamster about how to become a professional critic... this is getting far.

And you just barged in the thread for what? Take names, makes claims and get away with it? You basically took some users' posts and answered them one by one within a sentence. I don't understand your contribution, really. It litteraly did nothing to prop what you think of all this.