I think Kotaku reacted like that because they're talking to investors. They don't actually care about metacritic scores they care about money.

100% agree with this; that's what this is all about. Investors in film studios don't care if Michael Bay movies get praise from critics, they just see that they make tons of money and smile. Iwata's job is not telling these people how much praise they get by the media; it is telling what the future looks like when it comes to profits and value.

Besides, as long as all these positive reviews and quality statements don't really help the console itself making waves in the market and developers shy away from the platform; it is completely irrelevant. Companies don't register stocks to maintain their integrity; they do it to make money.

And then in the end it'll just make the investors ask questions like: If the games are so good, why isn't Wii U selling as well as the other consoles?

Who doesn't like to brag?

And besides, it's not like Nintendo was doing it in a distasteful manner or was making a big deal out of it. The kotaku author was trying too hard to make an issue out of it or was trying too hard to be funny. The purpose of that article? Who knows. All I know is that I won't get that minute reading the article back again.

"While players or critics may personally dislike a few of these games, overall, the trend is clear. Top rated Metacritic games are usually very high quality releases, and companies should aspire to make games that can be mentioned alongside titles like these. So why would Nintendo not want to brag about getting top scores from critics? Just because they cited an aggregator instead of individual review scores or box quotes, that somehow invalidates the point? Are they just supposed to say “critics liked our games,” and not try to quantify that in the least?"

This

Because they ignore plenty of PS4/X1/Vita games when they counted.

They need to be proud with their meta critique number, but Iwata at least need to think twice when he talked and presented to investor, Investor is not a gamer, they are people who cares only for sales. I guess people need to calm a bit when reading an article.

C'mon guys, what's going on here?

It's obvious that Nintendo wanted to show them that the games are good despite not selling too well. They weren't just "bragging". In a year with some disasters like AC: Unity, Driveclub, etc... they wanted to show that their studios are doing a good job and that their clients are happier with their products than the average (is that true??).

Nintendo is well known for their quality, their innovation, etc.. They were saying "hey, look, despite all we still are good developers and we can hope for better days because we haven't lost our touch".

Even when a company is losing money, if its product is good, an investor can just wait for better days because he knows that the company is on the right path. For the lack of a better indicator, Nintendo showed them Metacritic numbers to say that Nintendo games are still good (above average).

It's wrong, what ever reason you saying it's not logical. You can love Nintendo all you want, but it doesn't mean Iwata is right all the time, you need to respect him as a human that always make a mistake.

Iwata did wrong when he brag all metascore infront of investor,  what Investor need is result of the games sales, Iwata need to prolong his presentation " we have a lot of games with high meta score .......(+) that resulting high sales for console or game " bla...bla..bla...,  If he cannot talk sales then he doesn't need to talk.

He did nothing wrong, good games are why people eventually pick up consoles, from what I recall in front of investors he had improved console sales, good software sales, Amiibos taking the world by storm and 2015's line up, don't really see any issue here tbh it just comes across as some people taking it a bit personal.