Well outside the PS3 winning, which it clearly did, I'd say this is a pretty lousy review of the 2009 year in video games. The PS3 obviously won, then 2nd should come Nintendo DS. The only thing holding it down at the 2nd lowest position, which is CRAP by the way, is the fact that making crappy shovelware for it is as easy as 1, 2, 3. With enough resources I could make one myself. Also it has wide appeal, and obviously is gonna have some little kid games made for it, which will not be reviewed well. However regardless of masses of crap, there's still tons of fantastic games, far more than the PSP had. Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, Henry Hatsworth's Puzzling Adventure, Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (the superior version, with innovative controls instead of just being a lame rehash....), Scribblenauts, and Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box. And those are just the well-reviewed games that appeal to me. Name a single PSP exclusive that was as good as ANY of those. That's right, none. Maybe the Monster Hunter game comes close but it's still not as good. The PSP just has a ton of mediocre games scoring around 75. WHO CARES? Would you really not take 7 great games over 20 mediocre ones? Let's face it if a game scores around a 75, it's safe to say it's a mediocre game. So by that standard the Wii just beat out every other platform every year. Right? Oh wait no MC has to pander to the fanboys.... This year the PSP had one AAA game, not even AAAE, and 15 AA, some of them not even AAE. Four games in it's top 20 weren't even scoring above 80 on average. The DS had one AAAE, one AAA, and 20 AA games. No games in it's top 20 averaged below an 80. Soooo how's it behind the PSP? Obviously because it's what people want to hear, people want to be reaffirmed that a system that is basically crap (and this is coming from a PS3 lover) is better than a great innovative system like the DS.

Then to say the 360 was 3rd best. It was by far the worst this year. Metacritic forgets the fact that games come on multiple platforms, and multiplats should not count for as much as as exclusives. The 360 has practically no good exclusives in 2009. The Wii on the other hand had 18 AAE games. That's a pretty good showing. Looking at the 360's top 40 list I see.... about 3 exclusives. Then 2 DLC games. DLC doesn't count...... why should it? It's not a full game. A great flash game could be released but it being fantastic isn't as significant as a great console game is it? That's not a good sign. The rankings should go thus:

1. PS3
2. DS
3. PC
4. Wii
5. 360

I love the Wii so putting it all the way at #4 seems overly harsh, but the 3 systems above it had fantastic years. The 360 simply had no business even being considered to have had a good year.

I think that the article is inspiring, but my point isn't about that. People seem to avoid the obvious when it comes to the PS3, that is, whilst it isn't as customisable as a PC, it is a lot more customisable than an xbox360. And that sells it for me. Think about it.
Fantastic job metacritic.

Why is the PS3 version of Modern Warfare 2 ranked above the 360 version? The metascores are the same and the user score is better on the 360 version.

And I find the difference in the number of reviews pretty much helps out the PS3. Braid for 360 has 57 critic reviews. Braid for PS3 has 12 critic reviews.

The difference in identical games that scored differently for 360 and ps3 is likely due to noticeable differences in the AMOUNT of reviews used to average. 360 almost always has at least 10 more reviews factored in than the ps3. SF4 notably is missing a 67 that the Onion rated for the 360 version where they apparently didn't rate the ps3 version at all. On top of that, two of the top 10 games by sony were braid, originally released for 360 in 2008 as an exclusive, and the god of war collection which had GoW 1 and 2, both ps2 games released years ago. That game also only had 31 scores used to compile its average. I don't care which console is better, I just hate seeing stats incorrectly or hastily compiled. If you're going to do the research then do it, don't just grab a bunch of scores without looking for explanations for the variance. But then again, that's the biggest problem with metacritic: when you weigh all scores equally regardless of source, bias and ineptitude become mitigating factors.

Eh, well I think you have to consider the numbers as well. The PS3 released significantly fewer games than the 360 and possibly the DS/Wii, so that factors in...dunno though, guess it was a good year for Sony...

Most xbox360 games are released for pc. I have a ps3 and a pc so i get to play most games on the market.

Thank you for all of the comments and hard work reviewing games. I wish that the games were broken down into simple and complicated. Games such as Peggle, while not being very complex, are great games and need to be categorized differently than say Call of Duty.

Regarding the consoles wars! Personally, I like the grudge between XBOX360 and PS3, we all win because of it! If you are a smart gamer, you probably keep all consoles in your home but buy only the BEST software available (regardless if that software is PS3 or XBOX360 exclusive!).


In gaming, PC is totally outdated! In fact, the old PC is dying slowly (it seems software theft it is not only illegal but also lethal!). WII has great potential but not this year it seems.


PS3 leads the 2009 charts because of better SOFTWARE! And that’s great, future stands like this! QUALITY GAMING SOFTWARE should prevail anytime!


NOTES :


1. I will never buy a game that has a Metacritic score of 94 and a User score of 54. I will rent it however.


2. After many hours of playing both (50+hours), I can surely say Uncharted 2 is a great game but Demon’s Souls is better! The latter is the real game of the year 2009!