Metanalysis has not been scientifically proven to remove bias. Sure, they're a nice way of getting an overall summation of what a number of sources are saying, but it really is a case of rubbish in equals rubbish out and frankly, rubbish would be a charitable way of describing the vast majority of review sites on metacritic. Any decent metanalysis in any field takes into account the quality of the sources and either removes those that are subpar or compensates for that statistically. Metacritic does the exact opposite, it weights all of the sources equally regardless of their quality. And while opinion is subjective, Metacritic will take any review from anybody no matter how dodgy the website or how dubious the reviewer. It's like asking fifteen people on the street the best way to treat cancer and weighting the opinion of oncologists the same as people with no actual working knowledge of cancer.

To sum up: the average of rubbish is rubbish.

LG while I do agree that metacritic isn't the best thing it could possibly be ( I give it an 83, so it's not a AAA site), but honestly, there is no better way to decide the differences.

There are sites that bias both sides and when put together, give an average.
Also, factoring in that games are entertainment, art, it is hard to get a realistic rating or even a rating of one reviewers credibility.

I think that reviews are for those people who have only enough money for one game, and need help on warranting and directing a purchase. If we do not rely on the reviewers, then what do we rely on to decide what games are good?
Do we just trust someone on the internet who has played the game? What makes them an authority?
Do we download everygame before we play it? That seems to be the best answer which would fix everything, and it is so accessible and simple that it is one of the big reasons that both magazines and online reviews are starting to bite the dust.
But then how do we tell people online about the amazing experience we just had? How do they believe us? With no criteria other than the fact we post on the same forum. Then even if some kind of trust develops, how much more than a reviewer does that person become?

Saying that metacritic is garbage is going a little overboard. There are exceptions to everything, and some scores just don't make it by the skin of their teeth, but we expect that the more reviews there are of something, the closer that score is to the actual score, and we just have to believe in that because the alternative is less than nothing.
I say that because if we went by sales (albeit some of you would defend this), I would own nothing but Mii games and grand theft auto, because I would want to make sure I got what was the best to protect my investment. That would leave little room for games like ico, panzer dragoon orta, SOTC, okami, vagrant story, viewtiful joe, eternal darkness, conker, jet grind radio.... all 90+ games with less than half a million in sales.

If you don't care about this, and still think that sales are a good determinant of quality, then you can keep your revolution.

That's just the thing, just because something is the best we currently have doesn't make it good enough for the statistics we want to use. If all I have is my eye to judge the length of a molecule, does that mean I should go ahead and do that?

As for sales vs reviews in terms of what's good, if people are really concerned about what game to buy they need to find a site where the opinions generally match their own. If, for example, you happen to enjoy most of the games that IGN gives high scores then you may well be better off ignoring Metacritic entirely and focusing solely on a game's IGN score. I know that's something I used to do. There were particular reviewers who had tastes similar to mine, so when they liked a game I could be reasonably sure I'd like it too. We shouldn't be too quick to discount sales either, because they are, at least on some level, dependent on how "good" people perceive a game to be. Of course what's good for one segment of the gaming community may not be the same for another segment. It's like movies, Terminator 2 was a good action film, so people who like action films are likely to enjoy it and its box office taking reflect that and the relatively large number of people who like action films. On the other hand, even a very good arthouse film is unlikely to do that well at the box office simply because there are less arthouse fans than action movie fans.

I agree with you. However, this thread was made just too show what kind of games console owners were buying, so, review system or not, I need a way of coming up with the best games for each console so that I can show some numbers.
the meta way is the only way, because the other way is either sales, or opinion of one person, which are both bad indicators.

What?

sales of a game does not determine what kind of game it is isaaz.

What kinds of games, emphasis on the kinds and not on the games specifically.

For example: I can use genres to see what kinds of games people buy But I can't use sales to determine the genre, I don't know how you didn't figure that out.

I fail to see what the point is of this thread. Are you trying to say that most of the world wouldnt know a good game if it fell out of the sky, landed on their face, and wiggled? This is why they buy the Wii. Is this the point? Help me here prof.

@izaaz, sorry i see what you mean. What I meant to say was this: This thread was meant to show the buying habits for games that were typically perceived as great games. One way to determine the greatness of games is by reviews, as opposed to sales, something most people will agree on due to various gems that are passed over by the majority.

There is no real point yet amp, I'm still in the process of collecting data. These two samples took me like half an hour, so I'm still hesitant about finishing it, it's tiring and mundane. I will try to interpret the results of the data once collection of it is finished.

As of right now, it seems that the only correlation is that having a high attachment rate is directly related to the sales of those AAA rated games. Like I said though, I don't have all the numbers yet, and that correlation seems a little academic, but later on it might show some other stuff too.
EX: xbox and ps2 had very high attachment ratio's, and have about 2 AAA purchases per console, but yes it is a bit simplistic to say that higher sales of games means higher sales of games, until you start breaking up games into different sections.

Wouldn't most consoles have an attachment rate of 2 AAA purchases? Get back to me on it. So does this mean that you are going to be about number crunching and cold hard facts now?

Look at the part of the title that's in parenthesis and you'll find the point of this thread. Rol was spot on.