Peter Moore, President of the EA Sports label, did a recent interview with Gamasutra about the importance of Metacritic scores on EA Sports titles for the Nintendo Wii. Instead of relying heavy on what has become kind of an industry-standard rating system (to keep developers in check when they make crappy games), EA Sports will now be putting more emphasis on user-based reviews from sites like Amazon.

Among some of the beef that EA Sports has with Metacritic is that many major and not-exactly-major gaming sites seem to take their time in reviewing Wii titles. This leads to less data available for potential buyers at the launch of the game, which can prove problematic, especially when dealing with putting out the supply of games with proper respect to demand.

Also in question was how the review scores themselves from the more hardcore gaming sites match up with word-of-mouth hype and, ultimately, sales. Many of the very popular Wii games score below 70 on Metacritic, yet go on to be some of the biggest sellers on the platform.

EA Sports will basically be checking out the hype machine through (one of my personal favorite review sites) Amazon, among others. Through Amazon, reviewers can state their opinions without having to be professional, spell things correctly, or dodge touchy subjects. Though not as in-depth as some of the bigger sites, small-time reviews are more apt to report on their entire experience and satisfaction without nitpicking on graphical glitches or other minor issues.

This actually makes more sense than it might at first seem. Consumers are people who (can) have valid opinions, and the fun factor cranked out of name-your-Wii-game could be considerably larger for the average gamer than someone who earns a living off of video game reviews and attention to detail.

Peter Moore went on to state, “That’s where … people go for their information. They are not going to Metacritic. They don’t know Metacritic exists.” Its an exciting prospect, really, that the power of sway over a company as large as EA Sports can finally be manipulated through the common person.

[Source: EA Sport's Moore: Metacritic Less Relevant To Wii Sales]

Tags: Amazon, EA Sports, Metacritic, Peter Moore

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Industry News, Wii. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.