I haven't made any big tables on this site for a while.

Metacritic is far from universally loved, but is nonetheless one of the most notable websites in video game reviews. However, there has always been an argument about the legitimacy of the scores given, both by the Critics and the website's Users' score. Today (during the quiet of early 2015), I thought I would take a look at how Critic Review Scores differ from User Scores, and see where they are the same.

Method:

• All games with both a colored Critic and User Score were considered for this analysis. This included a total of 155 games, both retail and digital, released from launch in 2012 to last month's Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. 
• The 155 Games were divided into 4 categories: Nintendo, Ubisoft, Retail, and Digital.
• Nintendo's first and second party games were given their distinct category because the Wii U is largely defined by Nintendo's games. These include the obvious big candidates like Mario Kart 8, eShop titles like Pushmo World, and games merely published by Nintendo like Bayonetta 2. There are 23 of these.
• Ubisoft is a distinct category since it is the biggest 3rd party supporter of the Wii U, at least in terms of software represented here, with 16 Wii U games.
• Retail and Digital are categories used to refer to any games not published by the three above categories. The 69 Digital games are eShop exclusive, while the 47 Retail games can be bought at physical stores as well as possibly the eShop.
• User and Critic reviews are both considered on the common 100 point scale.
• The Colors shown correspond with Scores, using a variant of Metacritic's system.

Big Complicated Table (Feel free to Question Methods)

Observations

• Critics and Users seem to have a loose relationship. Many games, both good and bad, received similar scores out of 100 from both Critics and Users. In eight cases, including Shovel Knight, Bayonetta 2, and Splinter Cell, they were identical. With 82 out of the 155 titles, the two scores are no more than 5 points apart.
• Nintendo in particular is something Critics and Users seem to agree about. Out of the 23 games in this category above, 17 had different scores no more than 5 apart. The main exceptions are The Wonderful 101 and Hyrule Warriors, which users rated better than critics.
• Non-Nintendo games with similar scores included both high-profile games like Shovel Knight and Splinter Cell and the more obscure Coaster Crazy Deluxe.
• In some cases though, critics are notably more pleased with games than users. The most obvious examples are Activision's Call of Duty: Ghosts and Skylanders Swap Force, which had Critic scores 36 and 30 points above the User Scores. Though it is tempting to associate Ghost's low score with the backlash many shooters face, the fact that it and Swap Force come from the same publisher and were released within a few weeks suggests a further connection. Out of the nine games Activison has on the above table, five have over 10 more Critic points than User points.
• Other games that critics adored far more than consumers were often from Ubisoft. Of Ubisoft's 16 games mentioned above, Critics seemed to appreciate both Assassin's Creed titles, Rayman Legends, Your Shape, and Just Dance 2015 notably more than users. Oddly, users seemed to like the earlier Just Dance games for Wii U more than critics did.
• One last trend of Critics is that they seemed to appreciate retail games more than Users. On average, games in the Retail category would score about 2.75 points better with Critics than Users. Considering the number of games counted, and the fact that User Score is only about 0.3 points lower on average, this seems significant.
• On the other hand, User Scores tended to be much higher than Critic Scores in some cases. The biggest differences were for low profile Digital exclusives, like Angry Bunnies, Wooden Sen Sey, and The Letter. Note, however, that although the worst rated games on Metacritic like The Letter were better received by Users, they still received fairly bad scores.
• In general, User Scores tend to favor Digital exclusives, albeit to a lesser degree than Critics favor Retail games.
• Some notable Retail games that had disappointing Critic scores did notably better with Users. These included Sonic: Lost World, Tank Tank Tank, and The LEGO Movie Videogame. Note that Sonic: Lost World and Tank Tank Tank received major patches and adjustments after release, which may have improved their standings.

TL;DR Metacritic Users and Critics both like Nintendo, but Critics prefer Ubisoft and Retail in general while Users like Downloads

Any comments?

MC users have become viciously hard to please lately, so these seem like pretty good user ratings for the big titles.

Pretty interesting thread but I do feel like User scores should always be taken with a mountain of salt since half of them are usually trolls/fanboys/idiots/etc. And I believe that since Meta doesn't really have a way to verify if the user has actually played the game or not, its a bit eh

It seems to me that many, if not most, games where the metacritic score is significantly higher than the user score are from the big publishers.

I'd be curious if it's statistically significant and if it is whether it indicates professional reviewer bias, or WiiU owner bias against the big publishers.

Put the database into SPSS and do a correlation test and see for yourself.

Lots of effort mate. Nice work!

It's also really interesting to see the correlation between user and critic scores. Especially for the first party stuff. Maybe what Nintendo has been saying about user satisfaction is true.

Are you going to do one for the other consoles?

Can't right now, at work.

I'm certainly of the opinion that many fans will award system exclusives a few extra points simply because they are system exclusives. The really interesting thing, though, is the idea that some Nintendo fans seem to have a grudge against third party developers and publishers (judging from this forum). I can't help but wonder if that bias shows up in the user score.

Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition Digital Critic- 90   User-71   Dif- 19

-_____-

Really?? This is the best Metroid game on WiiU and users give it a 71, sure.

Oh and a quick question, how many 0's and 10's do these games have?? Because we all know fanboys play a big role in user metascores. Wonder if Nintendo's poor console sales means they have recieved less hate as they are less of a threat =P