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Greatest Console Ever? A statistical analysis.

ElectricBlue187 said:
so it's the top 50 games?

Actually baseball is a fine example. Comparing Babe Ruth to Barry Bonds makes about as much sense as comparing the PS2 to the NES.
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More like comparing the top fifty players of the new millennium (2000-present) to the entirety of those of the last (1900-1999).
 
Tobor said:
This is a mine field you've stepped into that I don't intend to follow.

A question mark in and of itself does not do enough to validate the results, plain and simple.

"Greatest Modern Console Ever" would have been fine.

Or better yet, just like Barry Bonds, put an * next to the PS2. Problem solved.
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Mod plz replace ? with *

kthx.
 
Gekkonidae said:
I never claimed that. I'm only trying to add something to a discussion that in the absence of real analysis can only ever be "a sad and fanboyishly competitive concept."
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Analysis of what? Opinion? "Best" is not a fact. It's not like there's a "best" console and we just don't have all the data to know which one it is.

I'm not sure what you're trying to find out.
 
Leondexter said:
Analysis of what? Opinion? "Best" is not a fact. It's not like there's a "best" console and we just don't have all the data to know which one it is.

I'm not sure what you're trying to find out.
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Again, if you're willing to discuss whether a game that got a 9 is better than a game that got a 6, then these are the same numbers, simply aggregated in a different way. I know that "Best" is not a fact, and all reviews are only opinions, that's what makes them worthy of discussion.
 
Run the same report, only this time exclude 'M' rated games.

thanks.
 
Gekkonidae said:
This is no more "an objective spin on an inherently subjective question" then the concept of numerical review scores is. I simply took a larger sample of reviews and tried to produce a list that compares the relative strength of library of various systems. Its only wankery if you want to wank about it. If you want to have an actual discussion, then it's not.

Again, I'm not ignorant of the awesomeness of systems before the PS1. There just isn't enough data for older systems. I'm sorry there isn't, now get over it. We can still discuss them, I just can't produce numbers for them.
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But there's still something fundamentally fanboy wanktastic about debating the best system ever. Especially when "ever" constitutes a history of no greater than ten years.

If you want a discussion germane to your statistics, rename the thread "In this thread we discuss the weighted, averaged scores of the top 50 games for each console in the past 10 years," not "Greatest Console Ever?" You can look at your stats and say, "Man, Wii games are getting pretty abysmal reviews for a console that's selling so well." You can't say, "Man, the only console ever worse than the Wii is the NGage."
 
Gekkonidae said:
The weighting is simple: where n represents the rank of the game from 1 to 50 and s is its average review score, the total score is the sum of (51 - n)*s for each n divided by 1250.

So the top game has a weight of 50 and the 50th game has a weight of 1. I ran this algorithm independently for gamerankings and meta crtitc and averaged those two scores for the total.
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If anything I think this analysis discounts the value of a big library. Lets make some assumptions. Assume that every console has the same percentage of games with 10s, 9s, 8s, etc. A hypothetical console library with 1,000 games has 60 games in the 9 range. Now another console library with just 500 games is going to have the same percentage of 9s, etc. but lets say it only has 30 games that got a 9 (same percentage). For the sake of argument, the rest are 8s. Now because games 1-30 have such higher weightings than games 31-50, both game libraries will have very similar scores even though one library is clearly superior from a score standpoint.

My proposal is this, instead of weighting the top games higher than the lower end of the 50, weight high review scores more than lower ones. Why? I think the games that have received 9+ are really so much better than games that receive 8+ but the scores don't really capture that each integer increase is almost like an exponential increase in game quality.
 
A PC connected to a TV is the greatest console ever. Greatest library ever for any system since pretty much every PC game is backwards compatible. And that's not including the somewhat shady ability to play most console/arcade games made before the GC/PS2/Xbox era.
 
Campster said:
But there's still something fundamentally fanboy wanktastic about debating the best system ever. Especially when "ever" constitutes a history of no greater than ten years.

If you want a discussion germane to your statistics, rename the thread "In this thread we discuss the weighted, averaged scores of the top 50 games for each console in the past 10 years," not "Greatest Console Ever?" You can look at your stats and say, "Man, Wii games are getting pretty abysmal reviews for a console that's selling so well." You can't say, "Man, the only console ever worse than the Wii is the NGage."
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The question mark was meant to imply that I was addressing the question of "Greatest console ever" that people are constantly bickering about. I did not mean to say that I had an objective answer to it, merely that I was providing fodder to it. If people are really bothered by my title than feel free to ask a mod to change it.
 
If everything is included then PC would be head and shoulders above the rest. Gameplay mechanics that have been a staple of pc gaming are only now being incorporated into console games. If the PC isn't included I would have to go with the SNES.
 
Yeah, I mean just consider how much the wii,ps3 and 360 libraries will change with Bioshock, Halo 3, Warhawk, MGS4, GTA4, FFXIII, Galaxy, Brawl, and Prime 3.
 
Gekkonidae said:
chart.JPG


Well, what do ya think guys?
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I have made my own objective classification. It is based on the number of Bioshock related games available for each system. The longer the Bioshock game, the higher weight, as any intelligent consumer would go for the system that has the more Bioshock.

Anyway, it's a good starter for a discussion and here are the results :

Code: 
Rank       System      Number of Bioshocks
1          Xbox 360    1 (Demo - 40 min)
 
well, more games = more top games

plus the 50 highest games

the chart pretty much shows the last gen and before systems within 4 percentage points, then a huge dropoff for current gen, due mainly to a smaller library, hence a smaller amount of games to scrape a top 50 from.
 
I actually did an analysis of the average score for the games on the Wii from metacritic and got a score of around a 66% average score for the software.

But, this was a month ago lower now? higher?
 
The Faceless Master said:
more games = more top games
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Unless you are dealing with % of library then you will not have an answer to the which is best pound for pound question.


Your actual results answer the question 'if I had never played games before which one has the best titles to choose from'.
Unfortunately this question is also a little meaningless as with annual update titles reviewers leave gaps after their 'first' review on a system (90%) then give the future games small increases if they are substantially better (94%) and dock points if they are too similar but still better than the original (86%).

I'd stick to sales data and answer the question 'which console did gamers prefer compared to the total market at that time'. LTD attach rate of games is also fascinating, but GB, GBC, GBP, GBA and people buying play-stations to replace broken ones confuse the issue.
 
Stapler Gonzales said:
Did you consider all PC games or just the ones from the past 5 years?
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All PC games are considered. However, a game must have at least 5 reviews on GameRankings or 4 on MetaCritic to count. Since video game reviews didn't become prevalent until the mid-to-late 90's, games before that era are generally not counted. This also explains why no systems before the PS1 are present.
 
AndyPants said:
Remove next gen consoles and it may be somewhat accurate
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Why? I think it's actually one of the more interesting results of this to look at how current next-gen libraries stack up. Especially if you repeat this, say, once a year.
 
Gekkonidae said:
All PC games are considered. However, a game must have at least 5 reviews on GameRankings or 4 on MetaCritic to count. Since video game reviews didn't become prevalent until the mid-to-late 90's, games before that era are generally not counted. This also explains why no systems before the PS1 are present.
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I realize that but still, PC kind of has 3 generation of games that count.
 
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