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noname2200 said:
binary solo said:

Metacritic derives its score from a weighted average of the scores from reviews it collects

...

But the fact is, there is nothing more objective available to base an assesment of which console has the best library of games leading in to the holidays.

The point some are trying to make is that the underlined in the first sentence goes a long way towards defeating the second sentence in its entirety. As in, even if metacritic were in fact the "best" option available, its actual value is low enough to make that prize meaningless.

Irregardless of the various failings of metacritic, it's a better metric to use than some random dude posting in an internet forum. There are typically sufficient reviews in a metascore to cancel out various of the most egregious biases. It is particularly effective at negating the influence of the platform preference bias. And in that respect metascore is fairly objective. Platform preference bias can affect metascore by a few points, but the presence of platform preference bias in any given review cannot cause the metascore to alter all that significantly.

But to support your claim that weighted average of selected reviews is sufficiently problematic to make metascore of negligible value you'd have to provide evidence that the contributors to metascore are not a reasonable representation of critics in general; qualitatively or quantitatively. Taking a sample, and weighting the results in an effort to account for certain biases is not in itself a fatally flawed methodology. You need to show either sampling bias, or evaluation bias in Metacritic's methodology in order to show that the best option available is not beter enough to be worth using for any meta meta purpose.



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