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.