Does the 360 have any real exclusives?

[Alic0004]

Onyxmeth said:

Alic0004 said:

This is a silly post, as I’m sure everyone involved knows, at least on some level. First off, the OP clings faithfully to wonderful, pure, unbiased data in order to discuss something which I think we all know is anything but unbiased on these forums; the incessant fanboy wars. Unfortunately for all of us, we can't afford to be this naive in the utilitarian world we live in, at least when it comes to more important things. Collections of data are rarely trustworthy when there is an emotional motivation behind them – the eye sees what it likes, the heart quickens in anticipation, and the hand takes a snapshot which rarely manages to include the whole picture, let alone get all the angles.

I don’t want to spend very much time here because I’m in the middle of making a gun-toting fiery deathmatch level in LBP (working title: “Sack-man: Arena of Fiery Death”) but I just wanted to show the same data for a moment, sliced a different way.

Instead of looking at 90+ and 80+ groups, lets try 95+ and 85+ groups. I’ve also put in the review averages so that people can see for themselves where else scores could be cut off (there are more advantageous places for both systems).


95+

360
None

PS3
LittleBigPlanet 95

85+

360
Halo 3 94
Gears of War 2 93
Forza Motorsport 2 90
Fable II (PC port?)
Project Gotham Racing 3 88
Dead or Alive 4 85
Dead Rising 85
Project Gotham Racing 4 85

PS3
Metal Gear Solid 4 94
Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction 89
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune 88
Valkyria Chronicles 87
Resistance 2 87
Resistance: Fall of Man 86


So the 360 has one exclusive at 85%+ more than the PS3 does, if we slice the data in a different place. But the PS3 has the only 95+ exclusive. Interesting!

All of the sudden, it looks pretty even. And all a result of throwing out the main assumption made in the OP: that cutoffs should be made in the most obvious place, at 80 and 90.

Of course, you have to draw the line somewhere when you collect data like this, but here’s the thing: By not examining the way that your results shift when you move the lines, by not challenging your own basic assumptions, you make a weaker foundation for your argument, and you end up with something that is more wishful thinking than conclusive data.
I want to point out that my results are not a fluke: by shifting the cutoff points to any number of different places, the 360 or the PS3 can come out way ahead. I’m sure it was random chance that 80+ and 90+ happened to show the 360 in an unusually advantageous light, but when results can change this much depending on the method applied, the underlying finding has to be that the data is inconclusive, and not that some irrefutable fact has been unearthed.

The most useful thing that can be done in data sets like this is to take a step back, list the review scores themselves, and let people in on your reasoning process as you attempt to organize the data. That’s what I’ve tried to do here.


Alic

The problem with the way you're organizing the data is that each grouping isn't equal. If your point was to split the listing into groups of every 5th percentile instead of every 10th, that I can get on board with. Sliding the scale to fit different scenarios isn't a way to measure anything. Your top and bottom groups would only consist of of 5% each and the rest would account for 10%. I've kept it even in every category and have organized it in the exact same way everyone else does around here. 5th percentile works too. But not a sliding scale of different measurements. In your world, we can simply slide the scale to a hundred different combinations and they are all of equal stature. Why not just make it look like this?

96-100%
93-95%
84-94%
57-83%
54-57%
31-53%
1-30%

This has as much chance of working as anything else correct? I used 10% because people understand it. They understand 5%. I don't think anyone other than yourself sees the point in making cutoffs wherever we feel like it to get a hundred different results.

 

 

Hey Onyx, thanks for responding. I should have made it clearer what I was objecting to in the thread. In your original post, you say, "I see a lot of misconception, especially from fans of a certain other console and from people saying PS3/PC is the way to go. So I took it up to see if this were true. Here are the findings, no spin required."

In every category of your original post, you find that the 360 has more exclusives. As an owner of both systems, that didn't mesh with my personal experience this year, which was that they were about even (only got the PS3 a few months ago) so I looked up the actual review scores for the games you listed.

What I found was that a shift in the criteria shows the PS3 equalling or outperforming the 360, at least in the upper reaches of the metacritic spectrum (I didn't take the time to do the lower rated games because I'm pretty sure the 360 would come out ahead).

85% is a perfectly reasonable cutoff for categorizing game reviews; 95% is a bit ridiculous given the lack of games in that category -- chalk that one up to my LBP fanboyism (which I freely admit!) I'm not aware of any statistical methodology that requires all percentages to be sorted in tens, or even one that requires the increments always be even, as long as they aren't too ridiculous and obviously biased. In fact, I've seen 85+ used a lot when companies brag about their ratings.

If Microsoft came out with an add saying "360 has more exclusive games rated 80+" and Sony came out with a press release after Killzone 2 (assuming it does well) saying "PS3 has caught up on exclusive games rated 85+" I don't think anyone would persuasively argue that one of the companies' was screwing up the data or doing something people don't understand.

If on the other hand one of them tried to use your crazy but awesome list of percentages above, it would be pretty hilarious. . . and a little scary.

Anyway, I objected because -- I thought -- you presented your post as factual evidence that the 360 categorically outperforms the PS3 in number of exclusives when sorted by rating, both in high rated games and low rated games. I pointed out that, depending on where you draw the line, it's actually pretty much the same number of highly rated exclusives. If I sounded like I was making an impassioned argument for the PS3 being "better", I really wasn't trying to -- I was just poking a hole in your system, arguing with what I thought was your argument, and pointing out to the legion that jumped on the bandwagon, that not everyone who disagrees with them is the victim of a "misconception."

I didn't think that your post was intentionally misleading at all, and the only thing that annoyed me about it was that it served as firepower for a bunch of fanboys to try to expand their territory, for lack of a better metaphor. Plenty of exclusives that aren't on PC, sure. Dominating the PS3? I definitely wouldn't tell that to any friend of mine who was trying to decide between the two. (Though I'd probably recommend the 360, because of the price, unless I thought they'd like LBP).

 

Alic