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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Metacritic is Showing a Wii Bit More Balance of Late

As a Wii owner, I don’t tend to hang around on Metacritic all that much…well actually not at all for a long time. All those red boxes hurt my eyes and the numbers depressed me. It was the sort of feeling I might get if I wandered into a biker bar by mistake; nice place for them but it’s no place for me.

Well I dropped in for an overdue visit and my oh my, they’ve changed the old place. In the whole “What’s New for Wii” column there were only two little red boxes and more green than I’ve seen lately, at least in my wallet.

What’s up with this?? I decided to do some amateur stats and see if the Wii was beginning to close the gap a bit. I decided to look at only box games, not WiiWare/Arcade/Network  simply because I don’t know what criteria determines who gets on, although my impression is all three consoles would gain more than lose. Anyway here’s what I got from the three “Whats New for” columns.

Console

# of Games

Highest Score

Lowest Score

Average Score

Xbox 360

35

85 (x2)

25

68.3

PS 3

30

90

21

69.7

Wii

32

88

36

71.2

 

I was thrilled to see my favorite console come in first but more importantly, the fact that there is less than 3 points separating all three consoles shows a more balanced, competitive and mature industry.

The game lists are stillvery different, and that’s a good thing, but how did they fare looking at the five games that appeared on all three platforms?

Game

Xbox 360

PS 3

Wii

Tiger Woods PGA 10

81

83

88

XMen Origins: Wolverine

74

73

53

Guitar Hero Metallica

84

87

85

PES 2009

74

75

85

Trivial Pursuits

66

68

68

It is surprising that the Wii stood up so well to its more powerful rivals but it is amazing that it won for SPORTS!!  With these results and all the fitness programs, is the Wii becoming the console of jocks?

And although I’m sure no one was going to, before we are treated to a long winded explanation of how the Wii is judged on a different and easier scale since it can never compete head to head……    That person might want to actually read the reviews for Tiger Woods and PES 2009 because most of the reviews go out of their way to say that the Wii version is the best version.

What importance does this have? As fanboy bait, not a great deal.  Reviews are still just another person’s opinion and shouldn’t take any pleasure out of how you like to play your favorite games. The average score for each console will rise and fall according to what gets published, not what you care about. You probably give as much of a rat’s ass that Leisure Suit Larry gave an unintentionally literal meaning to Box Office Bust, as I do about  Major Minor or Ready 2 Rumble since I’m way too old for kazoos and if I crave boxing, Punch Out is my choice.

It does mean that we are seeing excellent games on all consoles and that publishers are learning what works and what doesn’t. Good games written to take advantage of a console’s strengths work, crappy ports don’t.  It also means that crying in your beer that you can’t write a good game for a particular console is proven to be the nonsense it always was. And it means that the Wii is no longer just a machine for playing Nintendo games because this excellent showing only includes 6 (20%)  1st person titles and while the Nintendo games were all solid games, they weren’t even the highest scoring.

I think this is good news for everybody ……. except maybe rabid fanboys and I can live with that.

 



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Interesting to see the Xbox 360 versions were lower than the PS3 versions for 4/5 of those samples. Since the Xbox 360 has more overall games reviewed with metacritic then I wonder if the Xbox 360 samples normalised differently to the other consoles?



Tease.

^ 360 versions typically get reviewed more times than the PS3 version. Sometimes more than 20 times more. Higher chance of scoring lower that way.



As for it being the console for sports, it lacks Madden and FIFA from that list... and the PS360 versions of PES 2009 were pretty rubbish anyway, but it does seem there are less lazy ports in general



^Actually more scores shouldn't lower the reviews because they should fall within your normal range for a game anyway.



Tease.

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Madden, Tiger and soccer games have generally been better on Wii for a couple years now. Wii also has a bunch of mini-game sports games which are somewhat fun and the official Wii series games. Most people have known that Wii is the best system for sports games for years.



 

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Munkeh111 said:
As for it being the console for sports, it lacks Madden and FIFA from that list... and the PS360 versions of PES 2009 were pretty rubbish anyway, but it does seem there are less lazy ports in general

The crack about the Wii being the jock's console was somewhat tongue in cheek, however I think some reviewers' gratuitous  comments about the lack of good sport games on the Wii are getting dated and misleading. No doubt M+ will make this even more true.



FreeTalkLive said:
Madden, Tiger and soccer games have generally been better on Wii for a couple years now. Wii also has a bunch of mini-game sports games which are somewhat fun and the official Wii series games. Most people have known that Wii is the best system for sports games for years.

Actually, FIFA 09 is 7 points worse on Wii, and Madden is 2 points worse, and those are the 2 largest sports franchises



Soriku said:


That's probably largely due to the not so great controls. Worse graphics just makes it worse.

But now with WM+ out, that should change.

Do you wanna play with my M+ attachment?



Tease.

Munkeh111 said:
FreeTalkLive said:
Madden, Tiger and soccer games have generally been better on Wii for a couple years now. Wii also has a bunch of mini-game sports games which are somewhat fun and the official Wii series games. Most people have known that Wii is the best system for sports games for years.

Actually, FIFA 09 is 7 points worse on Wii, and Madden is 2 points worse, and those are the 2 largest sports franchises

The case could of course be made that Wii Sport is the largest sport franchise, Wii Play 2nd and Wii Fit 3rd which would definately give the Wii the advntage ... some people might not follow this particular reasoning.