Source Data

The data has been collected through days of webscraping to ensure that my endeavour does not result in spamming requests to one of my favourite sites. For the same reason, I will not be sharing the scrapper code.

The analysis below is based on all the games release before 1st June,2017. Now off with the analysis.

Classification

The score classification is done as follows:

• Rated : Titles having minimum number of reviews as per metacritic policy
• Exceptional: Titles with Critic Metascore>=90 or User Score>=9
• Great: Titles with Critic Metascore>=80 or User Score>=8
• Good: Titles with Critic Metascore>=70 or User Score>=7

As you can see, we refrained from categorizing anything lower than 70 because a console is defined by the good games it have. Moreover, due to wide availability of variety of game development tools, a lot of low quality games flooding the market and they can’t really affect the reception of a console is.

Critical Acclaim

In our analysis period of 43 months starting from November,2013 to June,2017, XBox One(XBO) saw a release of 1305 titles compared to 1888 titles on PS4 (Check PS4 in Numbers)). But only 807 titles were rated by critics which is 62% of total. It again goes on to show the abundance of low level releases.October,2016 saw most number of releases with 61 in total while June,2016 was leader of rated releases with 37 rated titles.

Exceptional Releases were few and far between with 11 titles garnering top plaudits with maximum of 02 in May,2016 and September,2016. Another thing of note is that these titles spanned 9 different months with longest wait being 9 months(Twice -One was in 2014 and another currently ongoing with no exceptional title since September,2016) between two exceptional releases.

Lowering the level to Great Releases or Better, XBO gave us 176 titles giving at least 1 great release in 40 months out of 43 months in existence.PS4 saw 234 Great or Better Release (Check PS4 in Numbers)) in the same period. In other words, PS4 saw 33% (58 more titles) more great releases than XBO in the same period.

PS4 saw 33% (58 more titles) more great releases than XBO in the same period.

Going even lower to Good Releases or Better, 481 titles- a whooping 60% of rated releases garnered critic score>=70.

Longest wait for an Exceptional title has been 9 months(Twice -One was in 2014 and another currently ongoing with no exceptional title since September,2016)

Zooming in to the releases, we observe that Microsoft’s platform saw release of at least 5 good titles every month since August,2014 while Sony’s platform got a similar streak going on since March,2014. Surprisingly, XBO is not too far behind in churning out steady flow of good games.

Surprisingly, XBO is not too far behind in churning out steady flow of good games

User Appreciation

Moving on to User Scores, a surprise is at hand. Users were less welcoming to XBO as they rated 783 titles- 60% of total and more importantly less than rated titles by critics. Sony’s platform showed us the opposite with users more inclined to rate a game than critics. This goes on to validate the success PS4 has had over XBO.

Users were far less welcoming in terms of Exceptional Releases as they rated only 7 titles higher than 9 on average same number as PS4.

Lowering the level to Great Releases or Better, User rated 110 titles as great or better.

It does not look better even if we go even lower to Good Releases or Better, 352 titles- a measly 45% of rated releases garnered user score>=7. It goes on to show again that users are harder to please than critics (or maybe console fan wars are reason behind most titles waltzing in mediocrity).

Users rated lesser number of games compared to critics for XBO. The scenario is opposite for PS4.

A zoomed view reveals, User liked the September-2016 the most showering 25 titles with good or better reviews.

That’s it for now. Planning to write on developer statistics in a day or two. Stay tuned and happy gaming.

If you like the post, feel free to share in your favourite social media. If you have any suggestions or queries, do leave a comment in the section below or you can PM me in the links at the bottom of the page.