Sure theres reviewer bias, but thats nothing compared with reader bias!

Unfortunatly a lot of reviewers seem to be marketing budget biased and are afraid to rate big hyped games with a score they realy deserve.

J Man, if you didn't know, your'e slightly biased aswell.

EDIT: There are and always will be biased reviewers, like EDGE

If you are talking about me, then I do in fact own all three systems. In fact, if you want to get technical I also own a DS and PSP, so it's really 5.

Also, your only reading what you want to read out of what I said in that other thread. It has nothing to do with the overall scores they give to games I love or anything, it's the fact that they consistantly rate ps3 exclusives lower then the average, and consistantly rate 360 games equal or higher then the average. Whether this is done intentionally or not has nothing to do with it. The only thing that matters is that they are an inconsistant review source. I never told anyone  not to read edge scores, or not to buy the magazine, or that it shouldn't be a part of metacritic or anything. I was only pointing out that for one reason or another, their reviews are not balanced. If this site was consistently 30% off the numbers of NPD do you not think that it would be critisized for it?

Squilliam said: Sure theres reviewer bias, but thats nothing compared with reader bias!

So true.

Recently, there have been more complaints about score inflation than anything else.

I think somebody touched on this earlier, but bias is an integral part of the human condition. Bias is absolutely neccessary to human survival, as in "I prefer bread without mold to moldy bread", if our ancestors hadn't had a bias against moldy bread, we might not be here right now. So to say that somehow video game reviewers shouldn't have bias is rediculous. But I don't think there is as much bias affecting game reviews as a lot of people want to think. And besides, don't we want there to be a range of opinions from reviewers? Don't you want to have a reviewer that generally agrees with you so you can go to that reviewer to find out what a game you're thinking of buying will fit your taste? If all reviewers had the same opinions, reviewed the game exactly the same, what would we really learn? I say that when the reviewers bias clearly shows through, we are learning something very important about that game. If something about the game is either so good or so bad that the reviewer cannot stop from mentioning it in a biased light, we can assume that it is a very important part of the experience (or that it might be). And then based on how this reviewer matches up to your tastes, you can get a clear view of how YOU might feel playing the game. You could look at bias as both an important and NECESSARY part of reviewing. I need to stop typing now.

The problem is that sometimes they let a reviewer review type of games they do not like.

There are good reviewers and there are bad reviewers, simple as that. It has nothing to do with their preferences or the scores they give.

It is impossible to review anything without bias. Any reviewer that says otherwise is a liar.