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Words Of Wisdom on 09 September 2008
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Grampy said:
Words Of Wisdom said:
Grampy said:
Words Of Wisdom said:

Do games for each console need to have the same average score for the source to not be biased?

Not at all. A source appears biased when it's scores are badly out of synch with all other reviewers.

If  Magazine A rates PS3 games higher than the average of all other reviwers 90% of the time and the Wii lower 90% that would tend to show a bias.

If the magazine was Playstation Fanatic then that's acceptable. When it's essentially an advertisement for the largest game retailer, it is not acceptable.

 

What's the point of having multiple review sources if you want them all to be "in sync?"

I think you're missing the point, it's not that they all judge the same, or judge with the same toughness, it's a consistent pattern of always voting one system high and another low time after time. You may remember an incident at an olympics skating tournament where it became obvious that one judge would always give a perfect score to one particular country even if they fell several times while giving another very low score to groups from other countries even if they skated flawlessly. It lead to a complete overhaul of the scoring system, although it is arguebly still badly flawed.

No one is asking for perfect uniformity but if a magqzine gave SMG, Zelda, SSBB, MK Wii all 2 out of 10. Gave GTA IV, MGS and Elder Scrolls on the PS3 all 2 out of 10  and then gave Coffeetime Crosswords, Frogger II, and Pirates vs. Ninja Dodgeball on the Xbox all 10 out 0f 10. Would it cross your mind that they might have some slight bias towards the XBox?

 

You see, I don't see a lower Wii average as inherently indicative of bias.

If I have to review 3lbs of shovelware, you can expect a consistently low average among them and those low scores will affect the larger population.  Most people will acknowledge that the Wii is getting the most shovelware this generation as it is the most successful so it only makes sense for that to show in the average score area.  That's not an insult to the great games the Wii has but rather just a reasonable expectation.

In fact, I would be more suspiscious of websites with high Wii averages.  Are they not reviewing many Wii games?  Do they just magically find only the good ones?  Are they giving shovelware games high scores?  Very odd.