Source Data

The analysis is based on metacritic scores for games released before 1st May,2020. 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 analyis period of 78 months starting from November,2013 to May,2020, XBox One(XBO) saw a release of 3969 titles. But only 1641 titles were rated by critics which is 41% of total. It again goes on to show the abundance of low level releases.Oct,2017 saw most number of releases with 116 in total while Sep,2018 was leader of rated releases with 39 rated titles.

Exceptional Releases were few and far between with 26 titles . The longest wait has been 10 months (startinng Sep,2016) between two exceptional releases.

Lowering the level to Great Releases or Better, XBO gave us 381 titles giving at least 1 great release in all but 3 months.

At least 1 great release in all but 3 months.

Going even lower to Good Releases or Better, 998 titles- a whooping 61% of rated releases garnered critic score>=70.

The longest wait has been 10 months (startinng Sep,2016) between two exceptional releases.

Zooming in to the releases, we observe that Microsoft’s platform saw release of atleast 5 good titles every month since August,2014.

Microsoft’s platform saw release of atleast 5 good titles every month since August,2014

User Appreciation

Moving on to User Scores, users rated 1640 titles- 41% of total- similar to the critics.

Users were slightly more welcoming in terms of Exceptional Releases as they rated only 28 titles higher than 9.

Lowering the level to Great Releases or Better, User rated 125 as great or better.

It does not look better if we go even lower to Good Releases or Better, 683 titles- a measly 42% 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 good or better compared to critics for XBO

A zoomed view reveals, Users liked Mar,2015 the most showering 21 titles with good or better reviews.

That’s it for now. 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.