For those unaware, this has been a narrative that picked up steam when Starfield got released, and even more steam when it didn’t get a spot on the GOTY list for the Game Awards. The thought process behind it seems to be that for every single game on Xbox but not on Playstation, reviewers and journalists form a secret cabal to deliberately sabotage these games with poor review scores and negative coverage. But, according to these conspiracy theorists, if these games were released, either exclusively or simultaneously, on Playstation, they would receive much higher scores and more positive coverage. Apparently, Starfield would’ve received a 96 score if it was on Playstation…
The sheer number of factors that have to be ignored here for this to even begin to make sense is bewildering, like how come player reviews on Steam are Mixed for Starfield? Would they be Overwhelmingly Positive if the game was also on Playstation, like what? But mostly I think it’s just sad. Because instead of demanding better quality from their corporate overlords, these people instead choose to bow down like they’re in a cult and accuse everyone outside as being indoctrinated for saying that “Xbox just didn’t release a banger with Starfield”. If you’re saying that, that must mean you’re either a Sony pony or you’ve been bribed or indoctrinated by the cabal!
It’s not the quality of the game, oh no, it’s the secret cabal of journalists conspiring to harm the Xbox brand and being paid off by Playstation, except when they do give positive reviews to Xbox games, in which case they are completely independent and the conspiracy ceases to exist.
Counterpoint.
I don’t think Xbox games get reviewed lower, in fact I’m hard pressed to think of an Xbox game whose reviews I disagree with, and this coming from a predominately Xbox gamer. Xbox releases some average games and they are scored exactly as they should be.
Starfield was meh, I played it for about an hour before I got bored, would have been shocked if it got included for Game of the year.
I just think PlayStation games get reviewed too highly, and that if these games weren’t exclusive they wouldn’t get anywhere near the scores they do but are hyped up way beyond their quality due to the general hype and fanbase around the PlayStation brand. And if people don’t think the hype and brand loyalty of studio can’t impact reviews, then they are just wrong. We saw that with Cyberpunk and it’s constant perfect scores at launch when even ignoring the shitty console versions and bugs, the game was just not a 10/10 and had many, many major flaws built into its design.
The best examples I can use for PlayStation is the trifecta of Spider-man, Ghost of Tsushima, and the Horizon games. What are so groundbreaking and masterful about these games that they deserve high scores of 9’s and 10’s? I bought a PS5 to experience most of these games and imagine my astonishment when these hyped up masterpieces are barely any better than your average Ubisoft game that everyone shits on and calls generic.
They are all just another take on the Ubisoft open world formula. They have the same generic open world objectives as most Ubisoft open world games, they have your ‘tower’ activities, constant collectables scattered everywhere, enemy camps and strongholds, half assed repetitive side-quest’s bordering on fetch quests, and half assed crafting systems and light RPG elements, and ‘dynamic’ events in the world.
Spider-man especially is astonishing, it’s an open world game released in 2018, and it doesn’t even have a night and day dynamic, it’s a toggle! What’s worse is that Spider-man 2 that released this year still doesn’t have it AND took away the toggle!
That’s something GTA did 20 fucking years ago on the PS2.
Are people pressing these games to high heavens based off the narrative? Because if so, even that doesn’t make sense.
Horizon’s nothing special, I wouldn’t even put it above the Tomb Raider reboots for narrative and nobody jerks those games off as much PS exclusives.
Hell Spider-man 2 is nominated for best narrative, and quite frankly, how? The story is incredibly generic, and cliched tripe, about on brand with most the schlop the MCU’s spewing out these days.
It’s not to say these games are bad mind you, far from it, but if they released as Multiplatform I don’t think they’d have the scores they do, and they wou don’t when the PS fanboys to go to bat to defend them and hype them up.
>secret cabal to deliberately sabotage these games with poor review scores.
LOL. Did Timmy tell you this at recess because his dad works for microsoft?
If you want Xbox to get nominated, they need to make games worth nominating.
Yea redfall would’ve been a 10/10 if it was on PlayStation too
Starfield is just Skyrim in space.
Except not fun withing the first 30 minutes before I gave up, and with like 5000x more nothing to do.
Most of the cabal speculation is based on Spider-Man getting the write ups it did when it’s about a 7.
It’s the most hilarious coping mechanism I’ve ever seen lmao
Starfield is like a 2014 GOTY candidate. I detest the need these fans have to be persecuted. I’m embarrassed for them.
Man the smile across my face when Shadow of Mordor beats it is miles wide!
I don’t mean this to sound disrespectful at all but this just reads like redundant console war stuff. Who cares who’s better? Just play what you want to play and let others do the same, problem solved
However, to reply directly to your statements, everything you’ve said is a gross exaggeration. To be clear before I say this next bit, I own both PS and Xbox. As stated, the whole console wars thing is just silly, so you need to look at them both individually, not comparatively.
PS is in a weird place right now with Jim Ryan and other long serving figureheads leaving the company, as well as the supposed development of a number of live service games that have now been reduced. We don’t currently know what’s next in regards to PS First Party outside of TLOUP2R. Despite this, Spider-Man 2 is the 4th best selling game of the year and it only released 2 months ago. And this year has been an absolute banger for games with many receiving very high review scores. On top of that, since the PS5 launched we’ve seen First Party or Second Party Exclusive releases such as GoW:R, HFW (including DLC), Returnal, Ratchet and Clank, Sack Boy, TLOUP1, Ghost of Tsushima, Death Stranding Directors Cut, Spider-Man Miles Morales, a Spider-Man remaster, GT7, Demons Souls, etc. That’s a phenomenal line up of games and there are more as well as the list of last generation games like HZD, Uncharted, Detroit, GoW, Infamous, etc. that can be played on the PS5.
Hardware wise, the PS5 is currently selling more than the PS4 at the same point in its life cycle despite all the stock issues through the pandemic and such. They’ve also released PSVR2 (not the best point to make I know) a surprisingly popular remote play device with the PS Portal, as well as new headset and earbuds. And let’s not forget to mention the haptic feedback and 3D audio features, standard across all PS5 accessories (no special purchase required) that lead to a much more immersive experience for the player and reviewer alike.
Outside of the recent acquisitions of Insomniac, Bungie and House Marque, most of the studios PS own are teams they have developed and invested heavily in over around 30 years of PS existing. Naughty Dog are arguably the best dev team on the planet and that is from years of support from Sony
Xbox on the other hand is a different story.
Phil Spencer has been the Xbox CEO for a long time now and personally I’m yet to see what contributions have been made to the industry as a whole. Game Pass is a great addition to the Xbox but it simply isn’t doing the numbers they want with the service it currently provides. 3rd party triple A is the bread and butter of gaming and the leaked FTC documents clearly show that the cost to put 3rd Party AAA on Game Pass just is not feasible. So Game Pass is filled with AA, A and first party titles.
Xbox first party is in dire straits at the minute. As far as I can remember so far this gen we’ve had Gears 5 (I’m a huge Gears fan and this game broke me) Halo: Infinite (terrible release but is doing better), Forza, Red Fall and Starfield. There was no First Party release in 2022. Redfall speaks for itself and I can’t comment on Starfield as I haven’t played it myself, but from what I have seen, it looks like a Bethesda RPG, which is great, but there was so much hype for this game on build up to release after nearly 2 full years of no release (excluding Redfall for obvious reasons) people were just clamouring for something, anything to be released.
Hardware wise there are the newer models of X/S and basically the ability to access games anywhere. Phone, laptop, TV, etc. am I missing anything? The official headset is great, I really enjoy mine.
In regard to studios, I am not aware of any studio that Xbox didn’t purchase. Possibly the Coalition as they were Black Tusk beforehand but I don’t know the history there. But there appears to be a lack of management when it comes to the studios Xbox own. 343 have had questionable results with the Halo franchise. Coalition are running Gears into the ground. Arkane is a team that are very highly thought of in the industry with releases such as Dishonoured, Prey, Death Loop, etc. but they get purchased by Xbox and their first release under them is Redfall (Death Loop was already in development when purchased). Ninja Theory were purchased about 5/6 years ago and are yet to release a game. And since then both Zenimax and ABK have been purchased. With figureheads such as Pete Hines leaving as a result.
It’s difficult to say all of this because there’s nothing I want more than Xbox to turn around and release banger after banger and give me a reason to turn my Xbox on again. But for a long, long time now there hasn’t been one. Take a step back and look at what both companies are doing and see who’s doing it better. Phil Spencer himself (on Kinda Funny after Redfall released) stated ‘making good games is not the answer to our problems’. You want to know why games review worse on Xbox? That’s your answer
Starfield would still be bad if it was on Playstation, too.
Game Journalists refuse to publish binding ethical codex which would require them to do full disclosure and to refuse ‘perks’ from gaming companies.
The industry is completely untrustworthy.
Way too many such sites don’t, and yet they are still taken into consideration when calculating average scores etc.
The journalists writing for these sites are not demanding an improvement either.