Are Game reviews biased against the PS3?

The recent outrage expressed amongst n4g members regarding a Gamespot reviewer giving a 7.5 score for the very popular Ratchet and Clank game got me thinking. One poster reasonably used metacritic as a reference to show that the reviews are balanced overall, and so I did a little bit of amateur research, using metacritic.com as my source

I compared 5 games for the 360 and 5 games for the PS3, checking their average review scores against the user ratings for those games, my question being whether the games reviewers are 'hyping' games from one console or another. The results are interesting, although there should be some caveats I guess. I am not sure what kind of percentage of user reviews are simply posted by fanboys who have not in fact played the game. This could change things, especially with regard to some of the games I list below. Having said that, I assume fanboys for the 360 are doing it to the PS3 games and PS3 fanboys are doing it to the 360 games anyway, and theoretically at least, there are more 360 fanboys than PS3 fanboys, due to the installed bas of each console.

The games I checked for the 360 were Gears of War, Halo3, Bioshock, Forza2 and PGR4. I looked at the PS3 games, Resistance:Fall of Man, Heavenly Sword, Warhawk, Motorstorm, and Ratchet and Clank.

My amateur research showed that every single 360 title, ie 100%, was rated higher by the reviewers than by the users, and that only 40% of the PS3 titles were rated higher. Does this tell me that the reviewers are biased? I am not sure, but it makes sense to take a look at a number of reviews before making your decision to buy, and maybe check out what the consumers feel about the game too. It definitely feeds the flames of dissent amongst PS3 owners that their games are being treated unfairly by the reviewers and therefore, that Microsoft is buying high scores for its games.

What may be more reasonable is that the reviewers are simply getting carried away with successful marketing campaigns and unconsciously rating certain games higher than they perhaps should be doing. It may also be an indication that reviewers are out of touch with their audience and maybe need to address how they score games so as to more accurately represent what their audience will think of the game. If they don't do that, then I guess games reviews will continue to lose credibility.

Here are the figures, first the title, then the review score, then the user score;

Gears of War - 94% vs 8.4
Halo 3 - 94% vs 7.6
Bioshock - 96% vs 8.9
Forza 2 - 90% vs 8.9
PGR 4 - 85% vs 8.4

Resistance - 86% vs 8.5
Heavenly Sword - 79% vs 8.8
Warhawk - 84% vs 8.5
Motorstorm - 82% vs 7.4
Ratchet & Clank - 89% vs 9.0

If anyone else has enough time to do a more through analysis, I would be interested in reading it.

[marison]

There are so much PS3 fans in the world, satisfied with the last offering from Sony. They could, in the same way that knewed disagrees in the negative posts about PS3 or positive posts about the 360, turning the users score down with a forceful avalanche.

[bym051d]

I think that's a pretty lame reasoning.

[bym051d]

Ideally, you'd like to see scores which resemble Forza 2, PGR 4, Resistance, Warhawk, and R&C. When the reviewer and user scores are similar, you more likely to have a trustworthy result.

It is interesting that when there's a difference, the XBOX reviews are higher whereas the PS3 are lower. Good job with the data hunting!

[makatak]

Everyone knows that Sony beat EVERYONE upside the head last gen. It dominated the market and it showed. People now are gunning for that spot and unfortunately the media has been 'turned' to back others because of personal feelings or money. Its no different in politics, TV stations, radio talk programmes, cable networks, newspapers all have their agenda's and show who they support. The video game industry is the same.... Sadly

[dylantalon]

i have all the console and enjoy playing different games on all the consoles. i love a few games on the xbox 360, and i love a few on the ps3 and i only enjoy one on the wii which is zelda. anyway, after i saw certain games that have been reviewed by certain reviwers, and i actually own the games that were given a low score cause of miniscule flaws ,i came to the conclusion that the reviewers are biased. heavenly sword is an awesome game and has way better graphics than halo 3 , but was given the same score in the graphics department has halo 3 . ratchet a clank for instance isnt my cup of tea, but after playing the demo, i kinda liked it, it takes a good game that i concider childish to make me like it.

listen, reviewers are biased cause a lot of these reviewers are bribed by microsoft which a lot of us saw microsoft did with one reviewer that actually declined the bribe of duffel bag filled with a $1000 worth of video games and food. listen, i dont like halo 3, i love gears of war, there is no way i would rate halo 3 a better score than a new ip like gears of war. gears of war actually did new things which needed to be done cause 95% of all the fps and tps have been the same since goldeneye 007 days and syphon filter. gears of war deserves at least a 9 out of 10, halo 3 doesnt deserve a 9 or close, 8 would be a good score for halo 3. halo 3 isnt even high definition.

anyone that played lair for ps3 knows it doesnt deserve a 4.5 out of 10, unless they are mentally retarded. you use motion controls to control the dragon and not a fcvking analog stick. the lowest score i would have rated lair is a 7.5. sometimes i have to wonder about the bull ship that is spread about the xbox 360 and the ones being spread about the ps3. we all know the failure rate for xbox 360 is over 33%, yet still i dont see it all over the fcvking place, i dont hear these adam sissie boy making a sissie show about it. but the ps3 the system that is the underdog thise gen is being dragged through the mud and has a lot of negative rumors surrounding it which most are untrue.

i'm on my 5th xbox 360 and i hate that, i really do worry when playing my games ill have disc error or that my system will have rrod. i still like the 360 cause it had a few games i liked , namely gears of war. i like the ps3 games that i own a lot cause the ps3 exclusives shows how much the ps3 is more of a superior system that all the other consoles.

[Marceles]

"reviewers are biased cause a lot of these reviewers are bribed by microsoft which a lot of us saw microsoft did with one reviewer that actually declined the bribe of duffel bag filled with a $1000 worth of video games and food"

Eh...I want to see a link of that duffel bag bribe lol, cause that sounds a little too bogus. But I do think something is fishy...I think PS3 kinda set the bar too high on itself at the beginning when they showed the Killzone 2 video at E3. Then when it was launched and everyone saw that Resistance was the best looking game (which is a VERY good looking game btw), everyone just looked at it and thought "well thats good...but where's the Killzone 2 graphics????", not realizing that all developers can't make games to look that good. And then everyone was comparing it to Gears of War which really unhyped Resistance even more, because a launch PS3 game didn't blowout an xbox game after the 360 was out a year prior to the game's release, which shouldn't be fair but...what can you do. Basically reviewers are waiting for that super incredible magic game for PS3 that no one's ever seen or experienced for them to finally give up a floodgate of good scores. Until Sony really has that super impressive game that reviewers can't deny is good and find any faults, reviewers are just going to run PS3 games into the ground. I even find metacritic suspicious at giving Ratchet an 89%...1 lower for it to be AAA. And not adding any more good reviews to the site. It's just weird...PS3 needs GT5 and MGS4. Those seem like the only games that can shut reviewers up. I'm sure reviewers will find some fault in Uncharted the same way they found faults in Ratchet...no 64 online multiplayer, too much variety? too easy? BS, let's have no variety, 64 player online co-op, make it an FPS, no variety, and insanely hard and lets see how the ratings go.

[PS360WII]

The reviews are alright it is only the obsessed that feel the reviews must be wrong. Lets not forget that those user reviews can be anyone at all. Heck they don't even have to prove they own the game to rate it. So we could have a non 360 owner who will never look at Halo 3 and then jump on the website and give Halo 3 a user rating of 4 and be happy with themselves and the same goes with non PS3 owners.

I think some reviews can be a bit much due to the hype train or the fanbase that follows said game. So sure that is one thing but I don't believe the reviews as a whole are biased towards one console. That's just an obsessed point of view. IMHO that is. If Super Mario Galaxy got a review of 2 I would have to read that review to see what the heck he hated about it but I would still buy the game. Just as I did with Liar, I bought that game and the reviews didn't fair well.

[ktchong]

The problem with user reviews is that too many anonymous are voting against consoles they don't like and for consoles they favor.

Here's a good examples: Mass Effect is not even out yet, but Metacritic is already filled with user reviews that say "this game sucks" or whatever, and the game at one point had a user score of 7.6 when it had about 15 user reviews. Obviously Sony fanboys had been voting against Mass Effect because it was a 360 exclusive.

Later, I had to go into BioWare forums and asked BioWare fans to "counter" vote against the Sony fanboys, so now the user rating went up to 9.1. But the matter of the fact is the game is still not out yet, but users are already voting for a game they haven't played.

It's user reviews that lack credibility, not critic reviews.

[RadientFlux]

I don't agree that there is any sort of review bias happening in game industry. Sure there are a few odd reviews here and there but it's more based on personal taste then bribery and hype.

What has changed in this generation and for the most part the last generation is the online community. People now consider any video game that receives an average score of 70% is automatically garbage, even without the trying the game themselves.

Fanboys are flooding forms full of misinformation which people then believe are fact. My two favorite ones are "The PS3 has no good games" and "All the good games on the Xbox 360 are FPS".

Basically people need to stop just checking the score the game received and any actually read the review and when possible rent, download a demo or borrow from a friend.

[KINGDRAMA]

to both questions: yes;fact.

[ReconHope]

This Conspiracy ended after Ratchet ,ok?.....This User's Blog Post is pointless and plagued with grammatical errors, if you ask me.