Games are usually released for sale to the public on Tuesdays, so the cutoff date we decided on was May 11, 2010. We compiled information on all these games regarding their release date, Metascore, GameRankings score, publisher, and developer. We then sorted it by various factors: overall aggregated score, release date (relative to the console’s calendar year), score category, publisher, and developer. We’ll begin with overall score.
Overall Score
We used percentages because the 360 has a yearlong head start on the PS3; percentages were a way to equalize that. Yes, the 360 has more than double the number of exclusives that the PS3 has, but quantity does not necessarily equal quality, as seen above. For example, over half of the 360’s exclusives lie beneath the Metascore line of 75. For Metacritic, anything below 75 receives the label “mixed or average reviews,” and goes from an eye-pleasing shade of green to an attention-grabbing hue of yellow. Nearly half of the exclusives for the 360 have a Metascore below 70. If you applied a regular grading scale to this, a fifth of the 360’s exclusives would be headed for some serious summer tutoring, and almost a third of them would be failing altogether.
What really sticks out here is the significant difference in the 90+ and 89-80 ranges. The PlayStation 3 has a distinct advantage in both of those categories, while the scenario is almost entirely flipped when we get down to the lower ranges. Again, I would like to stress that this does not reflect the quality of the games, but more the perception of those titles by the critical community. Still, the overall critical quality of both exclusive portfolios is illustrated quite clearly here.
Year-by-Year Average Metascore Comparison
This chart is divided up by the years the consoles have been available. For the Xbox 360, that would be November 22 of one year to November 21 of the next year, and for the PS3, November 17 to November 16 of the following year. The stables of exclusives for PS3 and 360 were fairly even in their respective first years, but the PS3 takes a significant jump and maintains that lead all the way from the start of its second year of availability to the present. In the second year, the PS3 exclusives had a ten-point advantage over the 360 exclusives. That lead jumps to almost eighteen points in the third year of availability, and then falls down to around a twelve-point advantage in its fourth year. That fourth year figure, however, is very susceptible to changing over the next few months, as the PS3 is still moving through its fourth year.
In terms of completed years of availability, though, Sony has maintained a steady increase in critical quality over its first three years, while the 360 saw a drastic decrease between the first and second years from which it really hasn’t recovered (the fifth year not being included since it is not a complete year).
23 Comments
May 18, 2010
This read was utterly fascinating. If anything's for sure after reading this, it's definitely the second to last line "this generation's endgame is not even in sight."
Two years, though, seemed misrepresented to me.
2007 for the XBox 360 was an incredible year for them and probably Microsoft's best year in the console business, from a gamer-culture perspective. I was shocked to see it scored so low, but that was due to games like Bioshock losing exclusivity, but more importantly, and this goes for the 360 itself - they allow too many small production-PC games on their console and it diminishes their average. The numbers aren't lying here, but a strict look at the statistics takes away from some truly great games on the 360.
Second, I was hoping in retrospect, the "first year sucked for PS3" misconception would be gone by now. Uncharted, Motorstorm, Heavenly Sword, Resistance, Warhawk, and the first Ratchet & Clank: ToD all provided a solid 1st year lineup, I think their notoriety and reviews were impaired by the negative reaction to the PS3 at the time. For example, I simply could not see GameTrailers giving Motorstorm a 7.8 if it were released today.
Still, a great read, Industry Gamers is more and more becoming a must-visit site for features like this beyond just the news.
May 18, 2010
I don't think it's fare to compare this way, im enthusiastic to know how much xbox will get if you guys had chosen ONLY the top 54 games from xbox.
If we are going to compare exclusive games we have to consider that some games are released just because they want one more exclusive game. And those games shouldn't -at any circumstances- affect the top exclusive games.
If i own a company like MS and i have a gaming console, i would try EVERY game released by a company exclusively to my console to maintain my OVER ALL score average of exclusive games. And i will kick any game i don't THINK it's going to score high.
its only fare to compare top games together, or at lease if one console outcome another in exclusive games, you should compare the same number of games for both of the consoles.
Anyway, that's my opinion and why should i know more than you guys. But im just curious about the "what if" situation.
May 18, 2010
Fare = Fair**
Spilling FAIL, LOL.
May 18, 2010
If I read this site and had no outside information on video games I would think that the 360 was a miserable failure.
May 18, 2010
And why would you think that Jon Rob? No one here has ever called 360 a failure. Ignoring the RROD problem, MS has put together a great console with a slick dashboard and an online service second to none.
May 19, 2010
A quick scan of the 90+ scores highlights some problems. GRAW was never released on the PS3, and yet is not included. Guitar Hero 2 was also not released on the PS3, and is MIA also. Then you have titles such as Oblivion and Bioshock that were console exclusive at the time of release, both of which only received ports over a year later.
It seems that either the writer of the article rushed the piece out, or has deliberately missed out key exclusives in an attempt to skew the facts.
I hope it's the former.
May 19, 2010
Where's Wipeout HD Fury?? It did get a retail Blu-Ray release!! And it's one of the best racers this generation sitting at 89 on metacritic!!
May 19, 2010
Indeed. I seem to recall GT5P (MetaCritic 80) was released on Blu Ray as well, albeit at a budget price.
And then Anthony has listed titles 360 titles such as F,E,A,R, Files (Metacritic 66), without listing the actual game that those are an expansion pack for, F.E.A.R. (Metacritic 85). So either both games should be listed, or neither as the expansion pack came with the version of F.E.A.R. (Metacritic 72) that was released much later on the PS3.
In fact, he seems to have gone out of his way to exclude a huge amount of titles, especially on the 360. Fifa 07 (Metacritic 73) UEFA 06 (Metacritic 72), Pro Evo 6 (Metacritic 79), Pro Evo 7 (Metacritic 80), Test Drive Unlimited (Metacritic 82), Hitman Blood Money (Metacritic 82), Tony Hawk's Wasteland (Metacritic 75), Need for Speed Most Wanted (Metacritic 83), the list goes on and on.
While on the PS3 there are far fewer that have been missed, eag1z has highlighted one, and GT5P as mentioned above, but also titles such as Ferrari Challenge (Metacritic 71) and Supercar Challenge (Metacritic 65) are obvious exclusions.
It just seems a shame that so much work was put into writing the article and making pretty pie charts, whereas almost no work was put into the facts behind the article itself.
May 19, 2010
Rotmm:
In response to your first comment, I assure you I was not in any way attempting to skew anything. I contacted both Sony and Microsoft at the start of preparing this piece to obtain a list from both companies of their complete exclusive libraries, but did not receive anything from them. As a result, the lists had to compiled from scratch. I checked several different lists on several different sites, so it was not a list drawn from only one place. When managing a study this size, there are bound to be some things that, somehow, slip through the cracks. I'm not trying to make excuses, here... just an unfortunate fact of life. There were some oversights in this piece on my part, and I am doing my absolute best to resolve those. The last thing I want is for the reader to question the integrity of my work.
In regards to those two 90+ titles (GRAW and GH2), I can tell you right now that the impact their inclusion has on the study is small. GRAW was released in the first year of the 360's release, and the 360 already had a slight edge in average Metascore over the PS3 that year. GH2's inclusion (which was in the 360's second year of release) only raises the average score that year by less than a full percentage point. Finally, they are both 3rd party releases, thus increasing the percentage of 3rd party exclusives for the 360, as illustrated in the final part of the article.
I'm quadruple-checking various lists of titles to make sure that on this go-around, there isn't anything I've missed. I hope to have that addendum posted to the site within the next day or so.
Thank you for taking the time to read the piece and for your comments, as well.
-Anthony
May 19, 2010
uh, wait, what? Guitar Hero 2? The PS2 game? I don't see how that would qualify as a 360 exclusive
May 19, 2010
Blarg:
We're doing a comparison only of the Xbox 360 and the PS3. As such, we decided that any games only on one of the current generation consoles, but also present on a previous generation console, would be included. This is because, technically, that title is an exclusive to that current generation console.
This was one aspect of the article I really struggled with. That being said, it was just something on which I had to make a call. This is what I decided to go with.
May 19, 2010
Great article, friend, and congrats on making the front page! Both the Wii and the PS3 seem to be at their best with first-party efforts, so it will be interesting to see if the 360 feels pressured to up the quality of its first-party titles (Natal should help with that, but we'll see). Keep up the good writing!
May 19, 2010
Anthony,
I have to agree with Jihad Al-Mofadda. The problem (aside from missing a title here or there which is totally understandable) is that you are comparing the full libraries and converting to a % instead of just matching 1 for 1. The fact that the has Burger King games and some terrible NTSC-J imports doesn't take away from the quality of the 360;s top 54 games vs the PS3's 54.
As a gamer when I walk into the store how many great options do I have? That is the measure of first party titles and narrowing it down to %s makes the argument which library has less crap in it. The best chart in your article was the least interesting visually, the initial spreadsheet of overall score.
If I only want to play 90+ rated games then the PS3 wins slightly, 9-7. If I want to only play games rate 80+, the 360 wins slightly 29-26. And if I'm an avid gamer and play games 70+ then the 360 wins handily 57-39. If metacritic is your guide, I think we can all agree no one recommends buying or renting anything rated lower than a 70.
So at best, it looks like if you compare the top 30 games or so, the consoles are very comparable in exclusives, but if you play more than one game a month (and just exclusives) the 360 is your better bet.
May 19, 2010
Anthony,
"In response to your first comment, I assure you I was not in any way attempting to skew anything. I contacted both Sony and Microsoft at the start of preparing this piece to obtain a list from both companies of their complete exclusive libraries, but did not receive anything from them. As a result, the lists had to compiled from scratch. I checked several different lists on several different sites, so it was not a list drawn from only one place. When managing a study this size, there are bound to be some things that, somehow, slip through the cracks"
I completely understand the concept that things slip through the cracks, but the concern for me is the sheer number of titles that have slipped through the cracks. Now that you have explained your methodology for compiling the lists in more detail, I can now understand why your PS3 list appears to be more complete than your 360 list, as for a number of years now there has been an almost pathological need for some PS3 fans to list, either on forums or PS3 fansites, "PS3 Exclusives" in exhausting detail, even going so far to as to include titles such as "Unnanounced Team Ico Game" (of course it's announced now) or "LA Noir", when it was never announced as an exclusive and, even to date, not given a release date.
For some reason, 360 fanboys and fansites have been less focused on such things.
However, as you are using the Metacritic scores, maybe the next revision you should the games listed on Metacritic and whittle out the non-exclusives. That way, maybe you wouldn't have missed such obvious titles such as Rockstar's Table Tennis (81), Bully (80) Burnout Revenge (89) Tiger Woods 06 (71) and more, along with titles such as Eyepet (70) and the fact that there are 6 Singstar titles out on PS3, whereas you have listed 2, and 4 Lips titles on 360, where you have listed 3.
You said that these things don't really affect the overall score much, and that may be true. But just by adding the few that I have highlighted here, the 80-89 range goes to 29 (from 22) on the 360 and 18 (from 17) on the PS3. To me, that can affect the results greatly.
But does it really matter? Not really. However, items like this are picked up by sites such as Kotaku where they only report the headline figures, so badly compiled data becomes "fact" in the fanboy world, as very few will actually click on the link to see what you have done with the annual breakdown, and even fewer will actually look at the data to find that it's lacking.
In fact, the only reason it didn't ring true to me was that a few months ago I did a similar compilation on exclusives, measuring certain sites and print magazine reviews against the metacritic average to "prove" (in as much as you can) that the UK magazine Edge holds a bias against PS3 exclusives. The only difference in the data I used is that I included titles such as Bioshock as they were console exclusive at the time.
And for the record, Edge does seem to have a bit of a downer on PS3 exclusives compared to 360 exclusives. And IGN seems to be more enamoured with PS3 exclusives than it is with 360 exclusives ;)
May 19, 2010
I'm not sure how I feel about the article, but I appreciate the work that went into it and it's certainly food for thought. But I do have a couple of questions:
* Why not include previous generation titles? This is an edge that the original PS3 had over the 360, in that it could play any PS2 title, while the 360's backwards-compatibility was very limited (and, from my experience, fairly inexplicable).
* Why not include downloadable titles? I already have some idea from the shelves in my local game shop which retail titles are exclusive to which console, but I can't compare the online stores (I only have an XBox). Some of my favourite games are from the XBox Live Arcade, and I've no idea which ones are also available on the PSN. Perhaps that's another article, though?
* Finally, what about lead time? Most cross-platform titles are released simultaneously, but I'd be interested to see what impact having an exclusive for a limited time (Bioshock and Castle Crashers leap to mind) would have.
May 19, 2010
This kind of data serves no real purpose and shows nothing that would effect a gamer nor his/her wallet. So what if a few unknown games pull one total score over/under another. Who cares? Being in marketing I still can not see why any one would look at this data vs sell through numbers and pickup rates? boggles the mind. O_o
May 20, 2010
Anyone notice how MS does well and they think they have everything "clinched" and then they just slide down hill because they think they no longer have real competition?
Look at the Xbox and the Xbox 360. Both have issues and I personally believe that the original Xbox had better games and was a better system overall. The 360 (like most of their games now) seemed rushed. They had to jump a head of everyone else and release the system. It has a standard DVD player and has games like FFXIII that require 3 dics. How old generation is that. The last time I remember ever having to switch disc's for a game on any Playstation was the original console.
And people say the 360 is "Next Generation"?? What's next generation about it? Nothing. Most of what you get on a 360 you can find on a PS2. Oh sure you can change the faceplate (*rolls eyes*), and you can pay for Xbox live (Yay). Or you could buy a PS3 for almost the same price as an Xbox 360 get free internet usage (since you already pay for that through your provider), get a Blu-Ray player (Next Generation Tech) and a better processor and graphical experience. This so called console war has been going on forever but clearly the PS has always and always will outshine the Xbox.
Sure you can call me a fan boy and that's fine if that's what you think I am, but if you look at the specs and look at the games for each the PS not only has a bigger selection of games but better quality ones. Forget only using 360 and PS3 games lets include original Xbox exclusives and PS2 exclusives. Landslide for SONY anyone?
I personally see the Xbox franchise going the same route as SEGA. MS will just be making games for Nintendo and SONY. Sure you may think never in a life time. But how many of us thought we'd ever see Sonic on a Nintendo console.
Sure MS may have the money but even Bill Gates isn't stupid enough to keep throwing money away on a project that costs more then it makes. If anything the future will no longer have MS making consoles or SONY and MS will have to create one console to compete with Nintendo.
And some people are might be thinking "well Project Natal will prove you wrong!!" Maybe if you ever see it. Besides Nintendo and SONY have been using motion way before MS. Check out the Playstation Eye.
Final closing words. "Great job MS, SONY already did that. Way to be behind even when coming out ahead!!"
May 23, 2010
This is one of the best console war comparisons I've ever encountered. Your site just gained another member as a result of this great read. I also wanted to give "props" to rmx687. I totally agree that a lot of the review scores for early PS3 titles would be much, much higher if those games were released now. The negative press back then was overwhelmingly sickening. For example, Heavenly Sword would've definitely done as well as say...Brutal Legend.
May 24, 2010
first off your list is full of lies. like Ninja Gaiden Sigma was canceled for ps3, Ninja Gaiden 2 is out for ps3 an is not only on xbox 360(they came out ether the same time or the ps3 came out first, two worlds is on the ps3 an so is Section 8 which just came out on ps3 this year
May 24, 2010
oh ya section 8 came out on ps3 before you made this an i did some looking around an i heard ninja gaiden sigma was canceled for ps3 i guess not (i wish i know that i would have brought it) but i do know its on the 360 to because i know someone who owns it on 360, i've play ninja gaiden sigma 2 on ps3 (can't find ninja gaiden 2 on ether ps3 or 360 there was a title named this an it was made in 1991) im gonna study this tomorrow an find all the errors
May 24, 2010
@guybush True enough that while the ps3 can play all ps2 games, not every ps3 has that capability, where as every 360 can play a lot of xbox games. So ya if you are one of the lucky few with a first gen ps3 you can not play any ps2 games. Personally I think that is a dirty move on Sony's part.
As for the PSN network exclusives, there is about the same amount of good ones on there as there are xbox exclusives. Personally I haven't found any that engrossed me as much as shadow complex or castle crashers has but still.
May 24, 2010
As has been pointed out a few times this article is slightly skewed overall. Just because MS has more exclusives in no way should it be penalized. The amount of exclusives has nothing to do with the overall quality of the system, it can mean any number of things. As for looking at the top 54 of each console that is obviously going to skew things in MS favor away from the PS3. Just as we shouldn't penalize MS for having more exclusives, we shouldn't penalize Sony for having less.
The best way to review something like this is look at who is getting the quality exclusives, and go by that data. Looking at it that way we see that MS and Sony are fairly even in that regard, and that it is really a close race.
May 25, 2010
no it depends on the person, like me, the only 360 games i wish ps3 had is conkers bad fur day an fable other than that i could care less, ps3 has way more for me, an i don't want a system that GTA4 took up whole 360 disc an only 1/4 the ps3 disc, shitty that rockstar didn't want to make 2 discs or GTA4 would have been better an still only 1 disc for ps3, hopefully next GTA is ps3 only