I like a lot Game Informer ,IGN and sometimes even Gamespots for the reviews .Also CVG (although they dont make too many at least in the online section ) and Eurogamer ,even if the latter is a bit hard and harsh on some good but not great games .I dont support 1UP and Edge ,the latter being just presumptuous writing like film critics sometimes .

I picked the sites I did because they showed up near the top of the list of sites on gamerankings.com ...

The "Bias" that these numbers represent is not necessarily a sites like/dislike of a particular platform but does demonstrate a sites like/dislike for a particular game line-up; this can be heavily manipulated by a platform having a greater proportion of a genre of games than most platforms have and a general like/dislike of that genre by the sites.

Tonight, on another thread, I will start exploring site's bias' in more depth ... I will do the sites one at a time starting with gamespot and will continue as people have requests for particular sites

IGN reviews the best IMO. They write stupid things in their reviews but give very non-biased scores.

Everyone knows 1up is biased, so there is no real use repeating it over and over.

The problem is.  If you a game reviewer you really shouldn't hate any of the systems you review for.  It'd be like being a food critic and HATING Seafood.  I mean you hate Seafood.  How can you be of any use rating it?

Wouldn't hating mean they give bad reviews to all Wii games? Why is it then that there are some Wii games they give good reviews to? Some built from the ground up with the Wiimote in mind no less. Does anyone really think they sit there and say "Well we've met our quota on bashing Wii games for the month, here lets give this one we didn't get to bash yet a good review.".

What I find really funny is that EGM is in that list, a magazine in which the majority of it's reviewers really like Nintendo (it's very obvious in the magazine).  It's also arguably the most trusted source for game reviews in North America.  Yet according to that list it's "biased" which is laughable especially considering it's readers (some of them Nintendo fanboys) would come to it's defence.

I wouldn't say EGM is *that* biased, looking at the data above. The 'average' of EGM's biases is about -1.7, which shows that they are just harder reviewers in general. This makes the Wii score only about 1% less than their average bias as a whole. Similarly, this is what makes Gamespy pretty unbiased. (the deviation from average isn't that bad... about 70% of the average in the case of EGM)

1Up on the other hand, has an average of -1.6. This makes their biases +2.2 for the 360, +1.5 for the PS3, and -3.7 for the Wii. THAT is a bias. Not EGM's.

Nah, being biased would mean you would give bad reviews to all the games you could get away with.  If you gave ALL Wii games or PS3 games or 360 games bad reveiws you'd have more to lose then the producer because you would lose all credibility.

 If you were doing it intentionally (which is a big step from just not liking the system) you would just pan all the halfway decent games while giving the few 8-9 ones fair reviews, or even slightly higher reviews to balance out the average.  Also you would definitly not post about how much you hate the wii in your blog and make fun of it.

 If you just didn't like the system however, you're just more likely going to give it bad reviews.  Ok hate is a strong word, say you very much dislike something like Seafood and it has to be cooked or prepaired in a perfect way.  Yet you lose steak, and pretty much any cut of beef is good for you.  You can't be an objective food critic.  That's why the people who get expansive food critic jobs tend to be the gourmets but the gourmands.

Gourmets are people who have sensitive palets and know a lot about food.  However you'd never see one go near even midlevel restruants.  They tend to only go towards really expensive restruants.  They often have a style of food they perfer.

Gourmands are people who just love food.  To them, they only judge quality of food, not price, or even atmosphere.  Be it a fine french restruant to a burger shop in harlem all they care about is the quality of the food.  They can still tell qualit, and they can tell ALL quality because they enjoy it all.  While a Gormet wouldn't know the first thing of burgers because they don't enjoy burgers and would be looking for seasonings that make sense on a steak.

 That's why most places have RPG fans review RPG games, Sports fans review Sports games.... etc.  And the occasional reviewer can do them all.  It only makes sense that Playstation fans should reveiw playstation games and Wii fans review  Wii games as well.  Unless you have a rare person who can just enjoy a game for being a game and a system for being a system.  

Also, while some critics may be biased. The only sites on that list i can see being truely biased would be 1up and Play.

Anything less the 5% doesn't seem that big of a deal. Cause 5% is what... half a point? Instead of a 7 it gets a 6.5? Which for some reviews can make a big deal, but it's about the minium of what i would consider any sort of bias. To me it doesn't matter because I very rarely compare games cross system anyway, even when owning multiple plats. It would really just depend if I'm in the mood for a Playstation 3 game, a Wii game or a 360 game.

1up is about 5.2% comparing to PS3
to
While Play Magazine is about at 4.4% which is close enough to 5.

Gamespy is just a hard reviewer in general. Which me is a good sign for a reviewer.