With the release of my article, “PS3 Outshining Xbox 360, Shows Metacritic Data,” a commenter or two brought to my attention several games that were missing. After doing the research, not only did I realize these commenters were correct, I also came to see that the number was larger than I anticipated.
In the process of doing the original article, we originally contacted Microsoft and Sony to obtain lists of exclusives for their systems. However, we did not receive anything from either corporation. Because of this, I consulted several different lists of exclusives for both systems to ensure that I would be able to put together a comprehensive list. In doing so, however, I missed the fact that these different lists had differing definitions of what counted as an “exclusive.” Some didn’t count a game if it was also available on a previous-generation platform. Others didn’t count games that were also available on the Wii. In retrospect, the latter of those two actually makes sense: a title that is available on the Wii, as well as one of the other two current-gen platforms, is technically not a current-gen exclusive.
Those two reasons are the primary explanations for the existence of this addendum. There are some titles I missed that were truly exclusives for either the 360 or the PS3, but the large majority of them (75% of them) are titles that either are available on the Wii, or available on the PlayStation 2, the original Xbox, or both. I want to provide you, the reader, with as accurate a picture as possible, so below you will find the revised charts for both the 360 and PS3.
Basically, both systems saw a slight drop in their average score, and by “slight,” I mean nothing more than a point and a half. The gap between the two systems in almost every score category remained the same. The biggest change in percentage gap was in the 89-80 category. Before, the gap between the two platforms was fourteen percentage points, in favor of the PS3. Now, the gap shrunk to approximately eleven percentage points, although the PS3 remains on top. Also, the differential in average score among exclusives rated 75 or greater shrunk by approximately one percentage point.
Here, the 360 suffers slightly from the volume of titles added in. From the second year on, nearly every annual average score falls anywhere from two and a half percentage points to three and a half percentage points. The PS3 saw the largest drop in percentage points for any one year, falling from an even 84.00 in its third year to 79.33. The gap that year between the PS3 and the 360, however, remains similar to what it was before the revision (fifteen points compared to eighteen before the revision).
Nearly every year, the 360 sees little to no increase in the upper score categories (“90+” and “89-80”), no change or very little change in the middle category of “79-70,” and little to moderate increases in the lower categories of 69 and everything lower. The PS3 sees changes in its second, third and fourth year, with the biggest change coming in its third year: a drop from 44.44 percentage points in the “90+” category to 33.33 percentage points, and a drop from 33.33 to 25.00 in the “89-80” category.
It is here in the publishers’ section we see some of the largest changes. Before, Electronic Arts headed up the list of 360 Exclusives Publishers at an 85. However, several early installments of multiple sports franchises were overlooked, including NBA Live, FIFA, Madden, and NCAA March Madness. These titles are ones that are also available on the PlayStation 2, the original Xbox, or both, so that is why they were missed. Only two or three of Electronic Arts’ additional titles were games that were truly exclusive to the 360. Rockstar, by way of its special edition of the PS2 release Bully, as well as its Table Tennis title, now takes the top spot. LucasArts appears on the list as well with two titles: Thrillville: Off the Rails, and LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy. Those two titles edge it just past Electronic Arts.
The PS3 sees far fewer changes on its publishers list. Atlus retains the top spot, but Sony Computer Entertainment Europe jumps up five points, putting it in second place. Nippon Ichi Software also makes an appearance on the list now.
The developers’ list sees the largest influx of new faces on the 360 side. There are twenty-three new developers on the list, although only three of them appear here with an average of 75 or greater (Climax Studios, Visual Concepts, and Neversoft). Eleven reside in the 74-60 range, and nine of them average below 60. Eight of the top ten developers remain (with the top six remaining unchanged), with two newcomers to the top ten: Ubisoft Paris and Climax Studios. One of the largest drop-offs we saw was Ubisoft Montreal at nine points.
Sony saw very little change on its list of developers. SCE London fell by approximately two and a half points and Namco fell by five points.
With the addition of two third party titles rated 90+ for the 360 (Ghost Recon Advance Warfighter and Guitar Hero II), the number of exclusives for both systems stands even at nine. Additionally, the percentages for the 360 change in both the 90+ and 75+ categories. In 90+, the percentage of first party titles falls from 43% to exactly 33.33%, and the third party number rises to 66.67% from 57%. At the 75+ level, the first party percentage falls to under fifteen percent, mainly because 31 new titles are now included that reside in the range of 89-75 (more specifically, 14 in the 89-80 range and 17 in the 79-75 range).
The PS3 sees no change in the 90+ category; however, there is a slight switch in the 75 and greater category. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue was added, thereby equaling the number of first party titles with third party titles.
Conclusion
Growing up, I was always told by people that you never stop learning, and this experience has been nothing short of a strong reinforcement of that idea. That being said (and if you’ve made it this far) I appreciate your taking the time to look this over. In short, the primary conclusions of the original piece, that Sony has a higher quality library of exclusives and that its steep investment in first party development is a primary factor in that, remain intact. I hope this addendum clarifies the picture for those of you unsure about my first piece.
17 Comments
May 24, 2010
I know that the 360 has more exclusives than the PS3 but for this article(and the original) you should have just taken an even amount of 360 exclusives(60 or any amount that matched your PS3 exclusives for this comparison piece) to give it a clearer comparison.
As it stands now, the 360 having a better or worse metacritic score on their exclusives(compared to the PS3 exclusives in this comparison) could easily be attributed to the larger number of 360 exclusives.
May 24, 2010
but still the ps3 has more games with higher metascores when compared to the x360's high games with high metascores
May 24, 2010
Anthony,
Thanks for the exhaustive update. I still don't have quite the same numbers as you (eg: I have a couple of more PS3 titles in the 70-79 range than you) but I think it's probably about as good as it can get.
My only slight concern is with your conclusion, as it seems to fly against the numbers you have posted. To say, "In short, the primary conclusions of the original piece, that Sony has a higher quality library of exclusives and that its steep investment in first party development is a primary factor in that, remain intact," seems somewhat disingenuous.
While it's right and proper to highlight the quality of Sony Published titles, with 18 being over 75 Metacritic (a baseline score which seems to imply "quality") and therefore bolstering an otherwise weak lineup of quality exclusives, your own figures show that the 360 has more than double the amount.
How exactly that shows that the PS3 has a higher quality library of exclusives... well, I can't quite get my head around that ;)
Anyway, good work on the piece.
May 24, 2010
Anthony, while I certainly appreciate the work you've put in to these pieces, your method of counting "exclusives" is nearly useless.
First of all… Madden? Seriously? That game comes out on absolutely every platform there is, but because the PS3 and Wii weren't out yet, it's somehow a "360 exclusive"? I understand what you were trying to do by including games even if they were on a previous-generation platform at the time, but c'mon now. Do you really have any doubt at all that games like Madden and Guitar Hero wouldn't have been released on the PS3 if it existed at the time? Calling those games "360 exclusives" is almost laughable, and your current methodology effectively makes every 360 game released prior to the launch of the PS3 an "exclusive." Lego Star Wars as an "exclusive," which was released day and date on PC, Xbox, GameCube, GameBoy, PS2, DS, PSP, and 360? Simply because the PS3 wasn't out yet? GH2 was five months old on the PS2 by the time it was released for the 360. I totally understand the "last-gen platforms don't count" sentiment, and I even agree with it, but I think a bit of common sense is called for here. Halo and Forza are Xbox exclusives, not Madden and FIFA.
The second thing I take issue with—and it's the subject of much debate, so don't take it personally—is the inclusion of games with a PC version as "exclusive." The word "exclusive" implies that the thing in question isn't available anywhere else. How can something be considered exclusive when another (arguably superior) version is available elsewhere? That said, since this is such a contested issue, it would be nice to see numbers for the 360 (and PS3) both with and without the PC games being counted. (And without the non-exclusives like Madden, of course.)
May 25, 2010
"THE 1 2 P" nails it on the head.
If you take the top ten rated exclusive games on each console, I suspect the metacritic averages would be very very similar. Doing that proves not a whole lot either, but at least it makes more real-world sense than counting shovelware on the 360 keep the score down.
All this article _really_ says is that there is more shovelware on the 360 than the PS3.
May 25, 2010
The results of this study are kind of an "it is what it is" sort of situation - it's exhaustive and does seemingly back up the conclusion, but when you have such a large pile of scores, it sort of dilutes the findings.
What I would think would be interesting is an examination of these scores year-over-year for Xbox 360 vs. PS3 exclusives, and then a parallel list comparing first-party titles year-over-year. Now THAT would be interesting to see if there's been a marked change over time.
May 25, 2010
Rotmm-
I really appreciate your comments. It took much longer than I thought it would to compile the necessary data, but I feel it was worth taking the extra time in order to insure accuracy.
When I speak of the quality of a library, I'm referring to the percentages. I used those percentages because I felt it was a good way to "level the playing field," if you will. Here's what I mean by that. Developers find the PS3 a notoriously difficult machine to build a game on. As such, some have stayed away from the platform altogether, the most notable of those being Valve.
In addition to this, the 360 has a year's head start on the PS3. By the end of its first year alone, it had more exclusive titles than the PS3 would have overall, to-date.
Microsoft invests its resources into securing as many third party exclusives as it can. I believe the numbers show their strategy is clearly quantity over quality. Sony, even though they have one less year under their belt and a 1/4 the number of exclusives that the 360 has, still has the same number of 90+ exclusives that the 360 does. To me, that says something about their development strategy.
None of this is to try and say either one of us is right and the other wrong. I think it's definitely possible to look at this study and come away with a completely different conclusion than another person. I just wanted to try and make it clearer why I did what I did :)
May 25, 2010
Also (and this is to the populace in general), there have been several commenters saying something along the lines of, "You should have taken the same number of exclusives from both systems." I wanted to say a quick word on that.
The problem with that approach, in my mind, is that it would severely unbalance the study. If we take the top 60 games for the 360 and put them up against the top 60 of the PS3, we're then comparing only about a quarter of one library against the *entirety* of another. Doing that would skew the data and provide a very inaccurate result. Even if we took the top 10 titles for the 360 and the PS3, it would not paint an accurate picture. I could take the top 10 exclusive titles for the Wii and make a case with it, since it would include such games as Super Mario Galaxy, Twilight Princess, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition, Okami, Metroid Prime 3, and New Super Mario Bros. Wii.
My point is that there are indeed several different ways to approach a study like this. The approach I chose was the one I felt would most be most comprehensive and fair to both platforms. I felt comparing the entirety of both libraries was the best course to take.
Just wanted to get that out there. Thanks, everyone, for your comments and criticisms! :)
May 25, 2010
Antony.
Thank for interesting article.
But I cannot understand where You got those exclusive titles numbers.
According to wikipedia PS3 have more *TRUE* exclusives than XBOX360.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_3_games and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_360_games
If there You see errors on those pages, please consider to fix them.
May 25, 2010
There are two problems with this article and they are assumptions that go to the Core of articles like this.
People buy games based on REVIEWs and hence Review aggregation is a valid tool for showing the popularity of Games and console.
In an article at Gamasutra, Analyst: Review Scores Least Important Factor For Game Purchases site aggregation was not an important factor in game purchase decisions. This isn't the first time this has been
Exclusives are the games that should be looked at for quality console gaming. Why compare apples to oranges.
To find the "better console", common games should be analyzed against each other.
May 25, 2010
Victor:
Never trust Wikipedia. Not at ALL a reliable source.
The way I came to these exclusive titles was this:
(1) Gathered the entire list of games that Metacritic had assigned a score to. Went with Metacritic, because one of my criteria was that if there wasn't a Metascore, that game would not be counted.
(2) Went through both lists, marking off titles that appeared on both lists (ie, the multiplatform titles). For what it's worth, both lists combined before I began narrowing them down numbered over 1200 individual games :)
(3) Marked off the games that had no scores.
(4) Then went through and marked out the games that had already been included the first time around.
(5) Took the remaining titles and removed the ones that had not been released in North America.
(6) Finally, went through and removed all the downloadable games from the lists.
I'm having trouble finding where I actually wrote down every step I took, but I think this is the majority of it. the games left after all the above were the ones I added in.
Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive list that has every single exclusive game. It all had to be done from scratch, just how my Granny cooks.
May 25, 2010
JohnZ:
A quick response to this:
"There are two problems with this article and they are assumptions that go to the Core of articles like this.
People buy games based on REVIEWs and hence Review aggregation is a valid tool for showing the popularity of Games and console."
I stated in the original article that I wasn't trying to show the quality of the games themselves, but rather the *perception* of quality from the critical community. There is a very slight, but significant, difference between the two.
Here's a link to the page I'm referencing:
http://www.industrygamers.com/news/ps3-outshining-xbox-360-in-exclusives-category-shows-metacritic-data/2/
It's the second paragraph in the "Overall Score" section.
Thanks for reading, and for your comments!
May 25, 2010
David-
Can you elaborate on what you're talking about? In the original piece, I did compare the average scores on a year-by-year basis. Is this what you're talking about? I feel like you have a slightly different approach in mind that I'm missing.
Thanks!
May 25, 2010
I think you should try doing it with true exclusives, not system-vs-system exclusives.
In most cases this means excluding games that are also on PC. For example, don't include Mass Effect 2 because it's not a true exclusive--it was released on both 360 and PC.
I'd be more interested in that comparison because I think a number of the highly rated "360-exclusive" (by your criteria, meaning they aren't on PS3) games are also on PC, and I have a feeling it'll cause the Metacritic ratings for "360 exclusives" to drop a bit.
It would also be interesting because those are the games that would potentially drive a decision in the choice between purchasing a particular system and not. An "exclusive" like Mass Effect 2 would likely drive the choice for someone who owns a PC significantly less than an exclusive like Metal Gear Solid 4, which isn't available on PC.
July 4, 2010
but still the ps3 has more games with higher metascores when compared to the x360's high games with high metascores
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September 24, 2010
I think this study is for console exclusives, meaning that if it appears on a PC it doesnt really effect the score of the game on a console. Mass Effect 2 is coming to PS3, so that means it will have to be taken off the 360 exclusive list anyway
December 5, 2010
I concur with Micheal James Clark. If a game is available on the PC as well then it shouldn't be considered an exclusive for a console since you could consider a PC a console of its own taking into account marketed computer games and free online mmo's.