Are Reviewers Getting Tougher?

Take another look at the table and think about where most of the red-orange is concentrated. Then look at where most of the green-yellow is concentrated? Did you notice how most of the green is in 2002-2003 and most of the red is in 2006-2007? Odd isn't it?

Things really started to go downhill in January 2006, the lowest January average on record at that point. Then in June 2006 the industry hit a new low for any given month, 60.8%. August was truly horrific, historically speaking. Since November 2006, it's been essentially one disappointing month after another.

Isn't it obvious? In January 2006, the Xbox 360 was just beginning to get a foothold in the market. Then in November 2006 the Wii and the PlayStation 3 finally hit the market. Quite simply, this generation of new consoles was a mistake. Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo and all the publishers putting out console software...the whole industry needs a mulligan.

Well, that's one explanation. Another is that reviewers, and the media in general, have been more critical of games in the past two years. As the industry itself has grown over the past couple of years, the media which report on videogames have evolved into a more critical institution. With blogs competing with bigger sites for consumer eyeballs, the bland reviews of old have become unacceptable. The populace is more prepared than ever to call bull when they see a bogus review.

So those review scores from 2006 and 2007 may not be directly comparable to the scores from 2002 and 2003. It's not that surprising a conclusion, but seeing the trend right there in green and red is a worthwhile perspective to have.

Notes

Data on review scores was gleaned from Metacritic. Handheld and PC/Windows games were removed before averages were computed. The entries in the final column of the table cannot be computed directly from the given table of data. For example, the average for all February games from 2002 to 2007 is computed by adding up all review scores for all games in February from each of those years and then dividing by the total number of February games across those years. In brief, the final column is a weighted average of the given data.