This is actually rather sad.
At an investor's meeting today, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata talked a lot about how great Nintendo's Metacritic scores are—even going as far as to brag that Nintendo's current releases have higher Metacritic numbers than Sony's or Microsoft's.
Um, congrats?
Keep in mind that Iwata is talking to boring investor types. That, and this Metacritic chest thumping is depressing.
Here's Iwata:
Nintendo of America posted this picture on its official Facebook page at the end of last year.
It shows a list of packaged game titles that received a Metascore of 85 or more and a User Score of 8.5+ or more on Metacritic.com, which we can admit received high scores both from the professional reviewers and consumers.
For Nintendo's current platforms, Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, 19 titles met these criteria. In contrast, the current platforms of other companies, PS4, Xbox One and PS Vita, totaled eight titles.
In short, Nintendo games are better than Sony or Microsoft games, because Metacritic said so. Or something.
Back to Iwata:
When a brand-new title is released, there are often misconceptions at the outset, so I would not take the Metacritic.com Metascores and User Scores as the absolute tell-all index, but I do want us to do our best to release such highly evaluated titles in succession.
THANK GOODNESS! He's not buying the hype. He knows that Metacritic is broken nonsense that actually hurts video games.
Wait. Didn't he say he just wants to release more games with high Metacritic scores?
More Iwata:
In fact, software available on our platforms continues to be reviewed highly even after the turn of the year. The two software titles which were released simultaneously with the New Nintendo 3DS hardware in the U.S. and Europe, "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D" and "Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate," received the very high Metascores of 90 and 86 and User Scores of 9.5 and 8.9, respectively.
Oh shit. He's actually rattling off Metacritic scores. In public.
Compared to the Metascore of 79—
Iwata. Dude. Stop.
—which the prequel in the "Monster Hunter" series, "Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate," received, we can understand that this most recent iteration is very highly reviewed.
Yuck, Nintendo. Just yuck.
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