What I believe Nintendo might be trying to do is (a.) as you say, give those mega-hitters some extra time in the oven (recall that SMBWonder had zero deadlines), and (b.) to shine some spotlight on new some new series: Instead of letting Mario and Zelda hog up all the NS2 early adopter sales figures, they’re letting DKBananza, Kirby Air Riders, Metroid Prime, and MKWorld fill that role. It’s a smart strategy for expanding their catalogue of “+10 million sellers”/“mega-hitters.”

I say Pikmin 5 and Metroid Dread 2 should’ve been the launch title, but who am I to make these kinds of decisions? (Also, speaking of Metroid Dread… that game could really use an NS2 Edition. That and PM:TTYD. Give those games some performance boosts and new content, please!!)

Thank you for this very thoughtful post. First of all, I am all for directing attention to the substance of the review. I maintain the biggest drawback of a scored review is that a lot of readers will scroll past the the text and go right for the number at the end.

As for your comment about outlets refusing to use the full 10-point scale, I also agree this is a problem. Unfortunately, a lot of outlets publicize a 10-point scale, but in practice only explore the range from 5-10. That said, I don't believe that's a problem inherent in the scale, or in scored review in general; rather, it's a problem with the culture of video game criticism. And not every outlet is guilty of that. I'm proud to say that the writing team at VGChartz is firmly committed to using the entire scale. A 5/10 on VGChartz means middling; a 7/10 corresponds to a solid game worth buying.

Of course, the fact that VGChartz uses a conservative scoring methodology only proves your other point -- that there is no uniformity across outlets. A bad/average/good system would remedy that somewhat, since the audience wouldn't need to consult a scoring methodology page to translate the results. That point is very well taken. But, at the same time, such a system is far less precise. Right now, on VGChartz, we use 1-10 with half points. That allows us to really focus in on the game's specific quality, relative to other games. And I believe there's value in that. I disagree with your argument that you don't need to know how decent, mediocre, and bad games compare to each other. The difference between a 5 and a 6, for example, is a big deal for me. 

It's a tough one. I think all systems have their pros and cons. I still lean toward scored reviews, but I fully understand the skepticism around them.

Getting stuck into RE Village on Switch 2 atm and it's brilliant; not sure yet if it's quite as great as Requeim, but either way still a phenomenal game.

Then there's Kena Bridge of Spirits next week, Pragmata next month, Indiana Jones in May followed by Tales of Arise, 007 First Light, FF7 Rebirth, etc, and I already have Fatal Frame, Starship Troopers, and Deadzone Rogue in my backlog.

Don't be an-l and say it really stands for tyrant, Don't be an-l and say it really stands for tyrant, Don't be an-l and say it really stands for tyrant......GGAAAAAHHHHH (I hate my personally some times)

Ah so another revelation I’ve had as of recent: Despite NS2 having inarguably the most commercially successful first 8 months of any video game console, people will always try and make a negative out of it. In this case, Circana just reported NS2 sales sit 45% ahead of NS1 figures— sounds like good news, no? Well… it seems a lot of people are turning this into “NS1 will sell 1.5 million next month launch-aligned, so NS2 is about to lose that lead” (which isn’t even possible since NS2 had sold 5.98 million in US alone by 12-31-2025 whereas NS1 had only sold 5.94 million by 12-31-2017).

In short: Doomers be dooming, Pokopia has made it harder to doom, but the doomers continue to fight in order to make discourse surrounding Switch 2 extremely depressing. TBH I don’t really like viewing my video game consoles from the perspective of “living in the shadow” of its ground-breaking predecessor… I’d rather just stick with, y’know, actually engaging in the medium (i.e. playing video games) than endlessly doom.

The 5.98 million for Switch 2 is units shipped in the Americas and not sales in the US. Switch 2 is a little over 4.8M sold through February in the US. Pokopia has caused a decent boost for March, so expect much higher sales in next months report for Switch 2.

It seems I had been misled by a user on ResetEra it seems… my bad. Appreciate the correction, Trucks. (I really should be fact checking before posting.)

No worries. Switch 2 is selling well enough after its record breaking launch. March should be really good.

Upon further inspection: It seems that NS1 actually had only sold through 4.8 million in US by the end of 2017. Is this correct? If so, you say NS2 had already sold through around 4.8 million in US by the end of February… meaning that NS2 won’t possibly fall behind by the end of March, no? Or am I misunderstanding.