Why Are Wii Scores Lower Than Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3?
Aggregate score repositories may be a blight on the pimply countenance of games journalism, but they may also be able to tell us something about the demographics of game sales. Using the freely available data culling tools at once such site, Next Generation's Matt Matthews asks an excellent question about the Wii: "Why are review scores for Wii games significantly lower than those of Xbox 360 and PlayStation titles?"
I've already answered that question in some detail here, but in case you missed it, let me recapitulate:
It's the games, silly.
Nintendo deserves every inch of the spotlight it's earned by merrily thrashing Microsoft and Sony in raw units sold. That number's impressive for all kinds of reasons you don't need me to remind you of here, and it arguably makes Nintendo the platform to beat in terms of base appeal.
Nevertheless, Microsoft (and at various points during 2007, Sony as well) has been absolutely beating the pants off Nintendo in retail software sales. For 2007's "top 50" software sales, the Xbox 360 outsold the Wii by a margin of 3.4 million units. But it outsold the Wii by over 10 million when you open up sales to include absolutely everything.
In essence, that tells us Nintendo's game sales are strongly front-loaded, and as we've seen, critically comprised of first-party games with a few third-party anomalies, whereas Microsoft's are distributed more evenly (both in sales and review scores) across the full range. Drop below "top 50" and people are buying more of less on the Xbox 360, but significantly less of less on the Wii. Also: Where critically acclaimed Xbox 360 games reliably crop up in the "less than 500,000 copies sold" range, Wii games that aren't "top 50" sellers are pretty much in the reviews basement, critically speaking.
I'll go out on a limb, since all opinion journalism is by definition flawed, and argue that the Wii's review scores are lower not because of some crackpot media conspiracy against the Wii, but because Nintendo quite simply has fewer laudable games. I'm not talking "casual-targeted" and "misunderstood by the enthusiast press," but tawdry media event tie-ins and others that barely (or dumbly) avail themselves of the system's central tenet (motion control). And I'll go one further by adding that I think this is really because Nintendo's third party quality control has been...let's just say a wee bit too forgiving in its rush to woo skeptical developers.
For every Mario Party 8, there's piles of stuff like: Ninjabread Man, Jenga World Tour, Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal, Chicken Shoot, The Golden Compass, Pool Party, Far Cry Vengeance, GT Pro Series, Escape From Bug Island, Dave Mirra BMX Challenge, etc. Everyone goes ape-droppings over a game like Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and that game's going to sell millions when it hits next month, but something like Rayman Raving Rabbids 2? If you even know what that is, not so much.
I'll bet most of you with a Wii reading this own most of the games on that "top 50" list, but almost none of the ones that aren't. Or maybe I'm wrong, and you really are playing Star Trek Conquest, Alien Syndrome, Pokemon Battle Revolution, Nitrobike, Wing Island, Godzilla Unleashed, etc. But even if you are, the sales data says you're the fluke, and nowhere near the nucleus of either the critical or commercial bell curve.
And for now (with fingers crossed that it changes) the Wii's average overall game scores simply mirror that fact.
Replay
Agree? Disagree? Have your say below in comments, visit Wake the Happy Words for expanded dialogue, or pelt me with emails here.
PC World's Marketplace
PC World's Free Whitepapers
tech news tech blogs community & forums laptop prices software reviews downloads
This is a very weak argument. Why don't you do the average score of the 360's and PS3's first year games? The 360 has been out a year longer than the Wii which means the games coming out now have been in production longer. As for the PS3, the console has VERY few games period, so of course they are going to have a better average.
Let me attempt a little psychic prediction for you, OOMMMMM; The games for the Wii cost about half as much to produce as the games made for the PS3 and 360. Also, like you stated above the console has a higher in home base already installed, meaning higher potential sales. I say the quaility of the average Wii game is about about to get a whole lot better.
Mike
Edit: Let me rephrase that -- the Wii in fact has 199 (of over 200) games available with at least one aggregate affective score, but only 76 which have been thoroughly press-reviewed. The PS3 has 105 available with at least one aggregate affective score, so Mike is technically correct.
The question is thus whether the "percent of crap" rule applies less equally to 100 games than 200. I still say the notion that having fewer games available as the impetus for raising an average is wrong.
As for first year vs. second year, the Wii's real triumph is that it managed to nearly catch the 360 in U.S. console sales alone last year, making it fair game for a software sales comparison.
Wii is wonderful, but at the end of the day it is a gaming console. A gaming console needs quality titles to sustain it, and the Wii simply does not have that. I have both a Wii and an Xbox 360. On a monthly basis I probably put 30 hours into my Xbox and perhaps 2-4 into Wii. I love it, I really do, but aside from the one absolute must-have essential game, Super Mario Galaxy, there is nothing to truly drool over (unless you're a longtime Zelda fan and won't settle for GCN Twilight Princess).
The 360, on the other hand, has so many superlative exclusives (for consoles at least, as some inevitably have moved or will move to PC): Bioshock, Gears of War, Mass Effect, Halo 3 (not my cup of tea, but even haters can't deny its popularity); and also shared titles with PS3 that Wii just doesn't have: Call of Duty 4, the Burnout franchise, the Rainbow Six franchise, Oblivion, the Orange Box, GRAW, PGR4, DMC4, Assassin's Creed ... the list goes on.
Wii's great, but it needs some more classics!
I'm speaking here as an observer only, because I only play once a month or so as a grandmother (wow).... but my ten year old grandson has at least fifty games (not all our fault) and we will not let him have war games, assassin games, etc. at this time. Perhaps that is some of the reason. Maybe Wii aficionados are not big into killing, mashing, assassinating or burning, but more into target shooting, bowling, tennis, and dancing, etc.? Although he LOVES Smash Brothers, it's about the only one that I can stomach of the fighting games. I know in five years it will be different and I can only hope, as a former flower child, he isn't into shooting humans as sport. I hope he doesn't have an overwhelming desire to kill, maim, steal cars, pick up hookers, etc. Maybe there will be more games like Galaxy, his new favorite. One can only hope--(but he also just got a little PS something, on which he plays Pokemon and some of the other pre-killer games.)
Other important thing to consider is that the average Xbox 360 or PS3 user is going to be a male between the ages of 18 - 32 and most of us have been gaming for years. We want awesome gameplay, good graphics, top notch control scheme. Graphics aside, the problem I noticed when playing my Wii over my Xbox360 is most of the titles I've picked up have an absolutle crap control scheme design to be a gimick instead of showcasing what the Wii can do. What console would I rather plat CoD on? The 360... Well honestly I would choose my computer, but out of the consoles, either 360 or PS3 wins. The problem with the Wii is that standing up and waving your arms frantically gets old after awhile. I find myself playing less of those games, and more often classic titles like Legend of the Mystical Ninja from the Wii Store or Geometry Wars, all requiring no motion controls. After a hard day of working, the last thing I want to do it get up and box all night on Wii Sports.
I buy about 20 games a year. "Most" owners of a 360, or PS-2 do the same. Microsoft, and Sony don't even consider Nintendo to be in competition with them. They are going after different markets. I'm 45 years old, and don't have any kids living at home anymore. From the point of view of most "hard core" gamers, we'd rather play "The Elder Scrolls" rather than "Zelda", and "Halo" rather than "Mario" any day. From a PS-3 owners view point you would be hard pressed to find enough people to buy a game like "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" From Koie on a Nintendo system. Even with it's large install base.