If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past several years, you’d probably know about the vast differences between how an Xbox One and PlayStation 4 exclusive game would review. Since the start of the generation, gamers quickly realized that games launched on the Xbox would get significantly lower scores than their PlayStation counterpart. Beyond that, games launched on Xbox would get slammed for the same reasons a PlayStation 4 exclusive would be praised for.
Phil Spencer recently discussed this bias towards Xbox during an interview with GameSpot. He noted that the latest game that was unfairly targeted by a hateful gaming mob, ReCore, got extremely low scores to what the team was expecting. On top of this, many of the reviews were weirdly inconsistent. To put this into contrast, the same outlets that punished ReCore, gave the PlayStation 4 exclusive No Man’s Sky—a game that is still widely regarded as the worst game ever released—a higher score gladly looking past the constant crashing and lack of gameplay it had.
Phil also pointed out that recently the critically acclaimed Forza Horizon 3 received 4/10 reviews from certain outlets—even though it scored an average 91/100—and felt that this was an unfair targeting of Xbox exclusives. Funny enough, this is usually a phenomenon only visible on Xbox games. Quantum Break received a 4/10 review from certain outlets because the reviewer didn’t like third person shooters; not to mention the hilarious negative a large outlet gave Gears of War Ultimate for ‘too much A button’.
However, the most jarring is how gamers and the media reacted to Phil pointing out the inconsistency from reviewers; and how some of them are only out to mine clicks out of bad Xbox reviews. This same standard did not apply when Shuhei Yoshida—the head of PlayStation—snarkly made stabs at Polygon reviewers for their 7/10 review of The Last of Us—a game that received critical acclaim—and pointed out that they must have done it for the ‘clicks’.
The gaming media have shown their hairy legs one too many times for us as gamers not to notice, and their unflinching desire to ‘get at’ gamers and executives just so they can rake in the hits on their reviews and articles have become a knife in the industry’s back. Media outlets are quick to point out that each review is just an opinion from the reviewer, however if one employs people who are biased towards one company or the other isn’t it fair to point that out instead of ‘pretending’ to be an unbiased multi-platform site, while clearly favouring one platform to the other?
Phil Spencer shining a light on this is the first step towards a community and industry that needs to seriously look at themselves and decide which way they want to swing. Political outlets are clear in their reporting on which candidate they support, isn’t it time gaming outlets become more transparent instead of hiding behind the veneer of ‘multiplatform’ just so they can make love to a giant PlayStation in the back room.
Do you agree? Or do you prefer an unapologetic gaming media? Comment below.
Dreyer was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 139 articles across opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @dreyer_smit.