To all Metacritic users past and present who have commented on the new web design. I personally want to thank you for all your considerate input and taking the time to list, in a logical, measured way what you like and dislike about the site redesign.
Of course we all understand that change can be difficult. After taking the time to read every post here, I understand there has been some frustration and disappointment. However it is important for users to understand the reasons behind some of the more significant changes.

1. Ease of navigation: Being able to find important information quickly and easily is greatly overrated. What is important is "clicking" in fact the more clicks you make with the mouse the better. Metacritic needs your clicks, as these help increase traffic figures, use stats and the rates that can be requested from advertising partners. So please keep on clicking for MetaCritic.

2. Simple clear layout: "Keep it simple" A clear, simple to navigate, organized layout has been tried before at Metacritic. Modern users want to exercise their eyes and minds to find the information they are looking for. Metacritic is pumping up the muscles of your brain while you search for even the most basic information. ..Brilliant!!!

3. Useful features: There were many useful features that allowed users to search and discover, music, games and movies. While discovery is nice, being hand fed a selection of a few options in each category is better for you. Metacritic is your friend trust it to give you the information Metacritic knows you need.

4. Accountability: The redesign just makes good accounting dollars and cents.

Thank you so much, Metacritic.

I am very surprised that there has been no editorial response to this overwhelmingly negative feedback. I, like many others, used to be a regular visitor: now I only occasionally check the site for short visits, just to see the metascores and compare it to your biggest rival, RottenTomatoes. I'm a film academic, and I can speak for my department peers and say that none of us use Metacritic on a regular basis anymore.

This is such a shame. I used to sing the praises of Metacritic and routinely trash RT's methodology. Now I suck up their methodology in order to easily access industry reviews: this site is now just too messy, too irritating to use.

Can we please get a response? Anything: a defiant statement of why you are not changing; an apology; even a flippant 'we-don't-care'.

I'm gonna keep this short and sweet. The new look sucks from every angle, the old look was better in every way. Fix it.

Please go back to the original layout. I use to visit metacritic.com every day. I've been here maybe two times since the layout changed. I'm so dissapointed.

What happened to the ability to list items by genre? Visually, the new design isn't terrible. But looking pretty comes second to functionality. And functionality has been totally neutered. As it is, metacritic is a horrible jumble of useless disorganized data that looks nice. Adding the ability to properly sort items by genre or other details would at least be a step in the right direction.

When I want to read reviews, only a few lines are displayed and I have to click "expand", but this refreshes the whole page and the position of the page resets to the top. From a technical standpoint this is lazy coding; from a user point-of-view it is like reading a newspaper that someone jerks out of your hand. A site designed like this will just drive users away. Whatever you guys paid for the new design, you got robbed. This site is an absolute mess now. These changes couldn't have been cheap, but they have removed a lot of usability and therefore value from your site. Good luck metacritic. You had a great site, now you have a mess that must be reverted or fixed somehow or it will fade away.

Before the change, I used to browse Metacritic several times everyday, mainly for movie releases or reviews.
After the change, I started coming back once a month, checking if they changed it back to the old layout, being disapointed every time, and closing. Until today. I'm a patient person, but I have lost my faith in getting this site back. I don't care about it anymore. I'm not coming back.

R.I.P Metacritic

I used to visit Metacritic primarily for the Music Forums due to the great information they held regarding new music as well as debate over the best music of each year. This made it easy to find new artists similar to others I enjoy as well as encouraging me to branch out. I discovered several of my favourite artists and bands in this manner however now need to find somewhere else to get guidance. With no opinion one way or the other on the rest of the site I doubt that I will return as often or even at all while the forums are non-existent. Since they have no relation to the other pages I am interested to know why the decision to get rid of them was made.