Game reviews as predictor of sales

[wco81]

WSJ has a piece on how game reviews predict sales. They look at metacritic.com.

Publishers are actually basing compensation and royalty payments based on metacritic scores, according to the article.

About 18 months ago, Activision also conducted a study of 789 games made for Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 2 console and found a strong correlation between some high game scores and strong sales. Activision Chief Executive Robert Kotick says the link was especially notable for games that score above 80% on Game Rankings, which grades games on a 1-to-100 percentage basis, with 100% being a perfect score. For every five percentage points above 80%, Activision found sales of a game roughly doubled. Activision believes game scores, among other factors, can actually influence sales, not just reflect their quality.

Presumably, bonuses aren't given out because of critical acclaim so much as that acclaim being a predictor of sales?

Some game companies now tie bonuses for their developers to game scores on such sites, while the stocks of game publishers can fall when a new title gets a disappointing score. "Everyone wants to make that game [that gets a score] of 85-plus," says Jim Ward, president of LucasArts, the games division of Lucasfilm Ltd. in San Francisco.

Game publisher Activision Inc. two years ago began using scores from a site called Game Rankings to determine part of its bonus compensation for employees, in order to spur its game-making teams to create better products. Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. has a similar policy for makers of its sports videogames.

Article has some interesting observations like how Take Two's stock jumped 20% after Bioshock got a high composite rating on MetaCritic.

 

[valioso]

so if the game is good more people are likely to buy it.. what a concept

 

[Nesh]

It's interesting because some games might still sell millions even if they are crap. If such examples were too many correlation would have been weaker between sales and scores. There are also some occasions were good games dont sell.

Then again potentially good games are the ones that get hyped the most and get the most press, which increases chances of sales. So at the end it may be the forces of the media before release in general that sell some games and not review scores. Or even names and franchises

So I d like to see the variables used in their research.

 

[NRP]

But hype can backfire. It a game is over-hyped and doesn't deliver, then that may (will?) adversely affect the review scores.

 

[Paul_G]

Sorry Mr Eggebrecht, no bonus for you!

I never really felt there was much correlation. The amount of average franchises that sell well year after year, those stupid sims expansion packs, and the lack of sales for some stellar titles like psychonauts means that to me, it's just that good titles wouldn't be good if they didn't have something going for them, and in most cases, that something will appeal to a certain group, who will then buy it over more average games.

 

[zed]

to contradiction the first post
i remember reading a while ago on gamasutra of a study (perhaps someone can dig up a link)
high reviews dont mean high sales (they had only a minor impact, hype/branding etc is far more important than good reviews )

 

[wco81]

Well as the article references, Activision did the survey and linked their own correlation between scores and sales.

But the article did cite one exception which were movie tie-in games, which often get bad review scores but still sell well.

 

[Nesh]

But hype can backfire. It a game is over-hyped and doesn't deliver, then that may (will?) adversely affect the review scores.

But might still sell regardless because of initial hype

Examples such as these is Killzone1. It was the glitchiest game I ever bought

There are also some occasions were games that didnt deliver didnt get the lower score they deserved because of their name and success of the original. Devil May Cry 2 deserved much less than it got. Got low scores though but sold millions

Similarly many hardcore Halo fans found that Halo2 had a few drawbacks compared to Halo1, and it wasnt the game it was hyped up to be although still great. Despite that it broke records of sales, got similar scores to the first and the fans are loyal and love it as if it was the second coming of Jesus Christ.

 

[iceberg187]

Game Informer actually does their reviews based on how they think a game with sell. I'm sure their Gamestop affiliation has something to do with that rather dubious distinction.

 

[NVNDA]

Time to bribe reviewers!

 

[StefanS]

Case in point: Beyond Good and Evil.

Hook, line and sink

Seriously, not every good game achieves good sales and not every bad game has bad sales. Take BG&E for instance, great game, great story, great scores across the board, but it sold like rotten toenails. Ubisoft even had to lower the retail price to 30EUR because the sales were that bad.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

ICO - good reviews, bad sales. Okami - good reviews; Little Britain the Computer Game - terrible reviews, but Little Britain outsold Okami in the UK.

Better games do better, but review scores are no guarantees. In fact the Metacritic scores just go to show that reviewers tastes don't always tie in with gamers!

 

[AlphaWolf]

There's always going to be exceptions, but the fact that higher reviewed games sell better than lower doesn't seem all that big a revelation. I won't go see many movies without first checking out a review or two, and I won't buy many games without reading a couple reviews. A game getting a high review score doesn't guarantee I'll buy it, but low scores pretty much guarantee I won't.

 

[StefanS]

There's always going to be exceptions, but the fact that higher reviewed games sell better than lower doesn't seem all that big a revelation. I won't go see many movies without first checking out a review or two, and I won't buy many games without reading a couple reviews. A game getting a high review score doesn't guarantee I'll buy it, but low scores pretty much guarantee I won't.

I am not arguing that there isn't some correlation to some extent. But there's also marketing, mass appeal, etc. What I am arguing is basing bonus and pay-outs on review scores doesn't exactly make sense.

 

[nintenho]

so if the game is good more people are likely to buy it.. what a concept

yeah good games usually get good scores. But you have to consider that average games can get their scores bumped up due to the being a sequel to a popular game or having a lot of publicity because of something controversial about the game (violence, sex, etc.). Also, there's when a reviewer wants to take a safe path such as with Lair and it's controls, most didn't figure that the majority (or a large majority) of the people that wanted to buy it would get the motion controls so they gave it a low score. or maybe the reviewers couldn't get used to the controls?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

yeah good games usually get good scores. But you have to consider that average games can get their scores bumped up due to the being a sequel to a popular game

Seems to me more often than not sequels are reviewed more critically. If SupergameX 1 scores 8/10, and SupergameX 2 improves everything over SupergameX 1 while remaining the same general idea, number is likely to score little higher, even though if it was the first version released it'd score 10/10. eg. EyeToy Play 3 is scored lower than EyeToy Play 1 even though it's pretty much better in every way, because the reviewers have seen the same thing before. A good franchise let down by a mediocre game is more likely to get heavily criticised, at least in the mainstream gaming press.

 

[wco81]

I think one thing to keep in mind is that the gaming media in the last couple of years is different than it was in the early Playstation2 days.

There were more fan-run sites but by now, most sites are owned by media conglomerates. Plus I'm not sure how long aggregator sites like Metacritic and Gamerankings have been around.

I think the study done by Activision was performed fairly recently.

That's not to say highly-regarded games don't suffer bad sales any more.

Maybe with more expensive games, reviews have more influence than they used to.

 

[RobertR1]

Game reviews + hype/marketing. Can't have one without the other. Also, the genre has to be appealing.

 

[TheChefO]

Pre internet:

I think you saw many sales of crap games that were based on hype or concept or past performance.

Post internet:

I think you're seeing many more games which are critically acclaimed, selling very well. Also, DL Demos will help quality games make a name for themselves and relate to sales.

Some game concepts aren't mass marketable and not everyone will like them. Psychonaughts was a highly rated game that many thought was under appreciated and undersold. I rented the game and frankly - I didn't like it. Concept was cool, but I couldn't get into it. I think it could have used another approach and some more time to be a better selling game.

Bioshock may fall into similar company as a game which most can't (or don't want to) relate to.

Generally speaking though, more people are able to get (better) information on subjects they are interested in these days through the internet and I think will continue to translate into better games getting better sales.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

One thing you can say about games like BG&E, Okami, ICO, Psychonauts, etc., is that they were well-received in aspects which are not so straightforward. Good story, good art direction, interesting gameplay features are all the types of things that a gamer can't really appreciate in the first 10 seconds of seeing the game. Moreover, they're all lower-profile, and published by lower-tier publishers (though there are exceptions that involve known publishers with unknown developers as well), so they cannot get the shelf attention or even the review attention that other games will get. Between a game that gets a 9.5 and a corner of a page for its review vs. the game that gets an 8.5 and gets a full-page or two-page spread, it'll be the the 8.5 game that's likely to get more interest.

Then of course, there are the games that you can know pretty well without the need for even seeing the game itself, because the name carries with it a certain load of information, and those will sell no matter what happens. Someone could make a Halo game that gets a 2/10, and it wouldn't matter.