Word of mouth beats reviews for games
Research questions Metacritic obsession
When it comes to games, reviews aren't quite as important as us critics sometimes like to imagine, despite the importance of score averages to publisher decision-making.
According to a survey by the Cowen Group, word of mouth is key to consumer game buying decisions - a far more influential factor than specific scores.
"We believe that while Metacritic scores may be correlated to game quality and word of mouth, and thus somewhat predictive of title performance, they are unlikely in and of themselves to drive or undermine the success of a game," CVG report.
"We note this, in part, because of persistent rumors that some game developers have been jawboning game reviewers into giving their games higher critical review scores. We believe the publishers are better served by spending their time on the development process than by grade-grubbing after the fact."
