Machina said:
I wrote a couple of the reviews quoted in this thread, and also content edited a few of them. I also happen to track all of these stats, so without trying to sound my own trumpet I know more about this than anyone else on the site. Whilst your examples are clearly cherry picked, you are actually correct that, when compared with Metacritic across the board, VGC is above average for Wii games, and roughly on par for PS3 & 360 games.
Now, the question is why? And the answer you've come up with is a site bias. I don't agree (I also don't agree with ioi's explanation that it's our scoring system, I find that even less convincing than yours to be honest). This is my explanation:
In the case of reviews it's not a case of the site itself being biased - there's no way you could orchestrate such a bias amongst 18 different people (that's roughly how many active reviewers we have) and 5 different content editors. It's my view that the scoring differences are less about console preference, and more about how harsh or lenient the reviewer who happens to review a particular game (and own a particular console) is.
I'll use Torillian as an example because I know he won't mind. His main console is the PS3 and his secondary console the Wii. I don't think anyone would accuse him of being anti-PS3 (and if they do they're plain wrong), but he's one of our harsher scorers. Given that he writes far more PS3 reviews for the site than anyone else, the end result is that for PS3 reviews we tend to be roughly in-line with Metacritic. This clearly fits my explanation better than yours (and it's the case with every single one us by the way) - is he anti-PS3? Or, more plausibly, is he one of our harsher reviews who happens to mainly review PS3 games because he actually prefers the PS3?
You'll find this with our primary Wii reviewers as well - there are some who score harshly when compared with Metacritic (O-D-C is a good example), and then there are those who score generously (I won't give an example since I don't think it's fair to do so without their permission, but you could easily work it out for yourself).
In short, I think the reason for the difference is the harshness/leniency of the main reviewers and which consoles they happen to own and enjoy, quite the opposite to idea of the site seeking to bump up scores for Wii games and penalise PS360 games.
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