| hentai_11 said: Your metacritic link sadly doesn't show the publisher or developer. Would be intresting to count which name appears the most. But I have another link for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacritic Especially interesting are the two tables which show the top ten of all times (stand january 2014) including the publisher and the best game per year. The name Nintendo appears more often than any other publisher. And thats one of the reason, why I think that Nintendo makes the best games. |
This might be controversial, but it needs to be said.
Look at Sonic Adventure on Dreamcast. It scored 9s and 10s and ended up with a high average rating. Same with the sequel. Then, when the sequel became multiplat, the average score dropped by more than 20%. I hereby claim that (for instance) Legend of Zelda would score less if it were multiplat. Perhaps not much less, but there would be less of a *ahem* "oh my god the new Zelda is out MEGATON" stigma surrounding it than there is now. Note that I don't think Zelda can be compared to Sonic Adventure in terms of quality (at all).
In my opinion Nintendo is a good developer. Over the last decade they have released a handful of outstanding games (certainly Mario Galaxy was an incredible achievement) and many games that are merely good.
Due to the exclusive nature of their software they are (to a some extent) immune from certain types of critique. The formula of a typical Zelda game has moved forward VERY LITTLE since 1998. That's SIXTEEN YEARS and THREE generations ago. Sure, Occarina of Time was brilliant, but just because Nintendo made a game of the year winner a decade and a half ago doesn't mean they are the best today.
LOOK AT RARE. Time changes the pedigree of a dev. Just like in anything else - Spain were unstoppable in football and now they are much worse.
For these reasons, and some others, I say that Nintendo is NOT the best dev in the world today. Furthermore, I would say that they need to prove that they can still compete with the best of the best in the gaming industry, because if you look at their offerings in the last 10 years then the consistency of their software output (in terms of quality and quantity) is not even enough to keep them relevant in the gaming industry.
