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[FairXchange]

He's not lying though.

 

[meerak]

Obviously.

But is that what happened with Recore? That's a different story.

 

[Bolivar687]

It's true. Especially for exclusives.

 

[watdaeff4]

Holy Phil. I will never criticize you again.
Yours faithfully
Raylan

Actually, I'm amused because your vendetta's are LOL.

Are you trying to deny this gem of yours?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=200587406&postcount=95

You are just getting called are for being a console warrior, just live up to it, that's all.

 

[entremet]

Sure, but if their arguments are of the same quality as gamefaqs or NeoGAF.com shit-posts, his cheerleading isn't exactly helping the team

He's being honest at least. It's more refreshing than the carefully vetted PR speak that MS's previous executives spieled.

To be fair, I don't agree with him, but I like his enthusiasm. This is what high level executives have to do sometimes.

Did you forget how Jobs masterfully handled antennae-gate? He's doing his job. Same here.

 

[SicSemperTyrannis]

Reading the full interview the question this post title is pulling from doesn't specifically call out reviewers for trying to get clicks with low scores for ReCore. It seems like two separate thoughts, he starts by saying he was pleased with ReCore performance and believes it earned a 7-8-9, but then continues on to mention that someone gave Forza Horizon 3 a 4, which seemed likely to be a way to get clicks. Context is very important here and people should probably read the full interview instead of just the article or just the OP/thread title.

Some OP'S give threads titles to get more clicks.

 

[etta]

Remember the time Raylan took a screenshot of someone's achievement page showing the time they played Quantum Break (it showed that individual played ~3 hours) and was trying to pass it off as proof the game was only 3 hours long?

I do......Classic Raylan

Yup, and just the other day he said that the opinion of Xbox people should be disregarded when they say anything negative regarding Playstation-related things. It's kinda hilarious to see him struggle to understand his own rules.

 

[keidashxd]

This topic is a little bit out of context in my opinion, Phil says exactly this: "somebody gave Forza Horizon 3 a four. I think there's certain reviews that are written more to get clicked on than they are to actually accurately reflect the quality of the game, and that kind of bums me out"

I don't think he's saying or refering to Recore this time, and this post suggests it.

 

[watdaeff4]

Yup, and just the other day he said that the opinion of Xbox people should be disregarded when they say anything negative regarding Playstation-related things. It's kinda hilarious to see him struggle to understand his own rules.

I own a Xbox1, PS4, and WiiU (and dabble a little bit of gaming on my Mac), so I have no valid opinions on anything?

LOL. Classic Raylan.

 

[benny_a]

Can you take your little wank fest over the topic creator in private messages please?

Report the thread to a moderator if you think it's inaccurate.

 

[Synth]

On the other hand, in ReCore's case, Armature consists of Retro's rejects that weren't talented enough to work there as evidenced by their poor track record.

Honestly, I think that's an incredibly unfair comment to make about a bunch of people working on a creative product.

There can be shitloads of reasons why a game doesn't pan out, or gain acclaim... and "the people working on it aren't talented enough" is often not it.

 

[Hibiki Kurosawa]

Don't set yourself up for backlash, Phil, you used to say all the right things. Hopefully this isn't also a preface for Gears of War 4.

PS: Recore sold well? I don't believe him.

 

[Orca]

Clicks don't have fucking ESP Phil. Many times folks don't know the score until they watch or read to the end. Quit playing kindergarden bullshit games

Oh come on, are we going to pretend he's not right? Look at review threads, where people often spend more time talking about the negative reviews - even if they're a clear outlier - than the positive ones.

Video games have their 'review opposite the trend' guys, just like movies do.

 

[Trup1aya]

He isn't wrong... But I don't think Recore is a good example.

There are differing opinions. And then there are people who give Forza Horizon 3 a 4/10... Which suggests to the reader that the game is utter trash.

Edit: hmm it seems like the OP took his comments out of context.... For clicks, perhaps?

 

[keidashxd]

Reading the full interview the question this post title is pulling from doesn't specifically call out reviewers for trying to get clicks with low scores for ReCore. It seems like two separate thoughts, he starts by saying he was pleased with ReCore performance and believes it earned a 7-8-9, but then continues on to mention that someone gave Forza Horizon 3 a 4, which seemed likely to be a way to get clicks. Context is very important here and people should probably read the full interview instead of just the article or just the OP/thread title.

Some OP'S give threads titles to get more clicks.

THIS.

(I didn't read it when I was posting).

 

[UpUpDownDown]

Of course this happens.

Some pretty niave people who can't see they're occsionally being played for clicks.

Smarten the fuck up people.

 

[schwabdizzle]

I believe him. Reminds me of Polygons Last of Us Review.

 

[nkarafo]

Is that what IGN did with Alien Isolation?

 

[dreamcast210]

Reading through some of these responses, I have to say, go read the actual Gamespot interview in its entirety. Puts a little context to the conversation. It's not like Phil Spencer did the interview specifically to say this about reviews. He also mentioned one site gave FH3 and 3/10 or 4/10. Point was, really low score reviews are click bait and I completely agree. ReCore is a 7/10 easily. You give a game a score of 3 or 4, it should basically be trash, and ReCore is not trash.

 

[BRocknRolla]

This topic is a little bit out of context in my opinion, Phil says exactly this: "somebody gave Forza Horizon 3 a four. I think there's certain reviews that are written more to get clicked on than they are to actually accurately reflect the quality of the game, and that kind of bums me out"

I don't think he's saying or refering to Recore this time, and this post suggests it.

Even if we're talking about Forza Horizon 3, does it matter? If someone were running that game on PC, watching their 1080 choke on it, having stutters and crashes and BSoDs, would you begrudge them giving it a 4? "Yeah, sure the game crashes every 30 minutes for you, but if you could play it properly, you'd recognize it was better than a 4/10." People have differing experiences, and put value in different places.

We either take people at their word, that they are giving their honest opinion about reviews, or we don't trust any of them. It's a slippery slope to pick and choose the people we think have valid critical opinions, and if we ascribe some ulterior motive to every reviewer who does something we don't like, we'll end up with a very short list of milquetoast, "trustworthy" reviewers. Unless there's proof-positive that someone intentionally knocks down review scores to drive clicks or that they are driving at some other purpose, we shouldn't be doing that. Phil should be smart enough to know he's playing with fire when saying things like this.

 

[shiftplusone]

regarding recore, some publishers release games too early because it's not part of their "haloforzagears so who gives a shit" trio instead of giving it the time it deserves.

It happens all the time, recore suffered for it.(it also had a lot of other problems that might not have been fixed with more time, but it wouldn't have been a worse game for having more time)

Thankfully, I had a different experience because I did the side stuff all along and the pacing wasn't as bad for me.

Just speculation on my part as I really don't think it's a bad game.

But Phil has a point, there are sites that do this for clicks, but ReCore had bigger problems that affected it's scores.

"Side" content isn't side content if it's required for the main quest, that makes it main game content.

 

[Paches]

He's being honest at least. It's more refreshing than the carefully vetted PR speak that MS's previous executives spieled.

To be fair, I don't agree with him, but I like his enthusiasm. This is what high level executives have to do sometimes.

Did you forget how Jobs masterfully handled antennae-gate? He's doing his job. Same here.

Didn't he just tell us we were holding our phones wrong and called it good until it became such a huge problem they finally had to come clean?

 

[Primethius]

Don't set yourself up for backlash, Phil, you used to say all the right things. Hopefully this isn't also a preface for Gears of War 4.

PS: Recore sold well? I don't believe him.

You shouldn't. Unless expectations were really low or US picked up a huge amount of slack. It only sold like 4-5k copies in the first week in the UK. After 3 weeks, it's total sales are only about 6-7k.

 

[Ninja Scooter]

Maybe that person just didn't like Forza? I mean unless you have proof that somebody is "doing it for clicks" than all you are doing is perpetuating the bullshit that makes reviews useless in the first place. People say they want a true 1-10 scale but the moment someone actually uses it on a game you like they lose their shit. Pretty weak on his part to on the one hand say we should be above all of this fanboy cheerleading garbage and then pull out this tinfoil hat fanboy shit of his own.

If you want to call out and criticize a review with specifics and details as to why you disagree, go for it, but if your only reason to call out a reviewer is "they gave a game I liked a low score" that is some pretty weak shit.

 

[Scientist Supreme!]

I can't believe the amount of people admitting to such delusion. How do live thinking like that?

 

[Zedox]

Reading through some of these responses, I have to say, go read the actual Gamespot interview in its entirety. Puts a little context to the conversation. It's not like Phil Spencer did the interview specifically to say this about reviews. He also mentioned one site gave FH3 and 3/10 or 4/10. Point was, really low score reviews are click bait and I completely agree. ReCore is a 7/10 easily. You give a game a score of 3 or 4, it should basically be trash, and ReCore is not trash.

Pretty much how I feel about it.

 

[Jonneh3003]

It depends on the game I think, I don't agree with a lot of the Sonic Boom Fire and Ice scores. Either people genuinely didn't enjoy it or they're trying to appeal to internet opinion on the series. You can't really accuse reviewers of doing this as there's no proof either way.

 

[Primethius]

Reading through some of these responses, I have to say, go read the actual Gamespot interview in its entirety. Puts a little context to the conversation. It's not like Phil Spencer did the interview specifically to say this about reviews. He also mentioned one site gave FH3 and 3/10 or 4/10. Point was, really low score reviews are click bait and I completely agree. ReCore is a 7/10 easily. You give a game a score of 3 or 4, it should basically be trash, and ReCore is not trash.

Not everyone uses the same review scale though. In my own personal review scale, my time with Recore is definitely a 3. Maybe even a 2 out of 10.

I don't think you can tell every reviewer outlet how to standardize their scoring metric just cause it ends up on metacritic.

 

[gypsygib]

While Phil's certainly right, it's a bit douchie to say it given his position.

Also, I tried the ReCore demo yesterday. The game was locked at 1080p and I couldn't adjust the resolution any higher so for that bit alone, I'd give game a pretty low score. 1080p on my 1440p monitor looks pretty bad. Strange thing was the cut scenes looked like 1440p.

 

[watdaeff4]

"Side" content isn't side content if it's required for the main quest, that makes it main game content.

Sorry, that's a fair point, and I'm not explaining well. I think that's why I had a more enjoyable experience than the reviewers because when you play the game, it appears to be side content till you hit that wall.

To me, I had the benefit of the reviews and early impressions here to prevent that from happening to me.

That's why I think that I personally had a better experience than the reviewers.

Just giving a speculation, that's all.

EDIT: what makes all this discussion a little LOL is that I actually read the interview now , this is what Phil says regarding ReCore and scores:

On the reviews, honestly I thought some of the reviews were a little harsh in terms of their view on the game. But for us, inside, again I feel really proud to have the character, the story, the gameplay style, and the partnership with Armature and Inafune-san as part of our portfolio.

I didn't try to tell anybody that it was a ten. I think we knew, as with any games, that there are certain things… if we started from the beginning and we knew what we'd get, there's a couple of things we would've done slightly differently. But we're very proud of how the game ended up. And I think seven, eight, nine, like anywhere in there is fine. Three or four… I mean somebody gave Forza Horizon 3 a four. I think there's certain reviews that are written more to get clicked on than they are to actually accurately reflect the quality of the game, and that kind of bums me out.

His point about clickbait was more for the 4/10 for Horizon 3, not ReCore. And the reason why I personally agree with him on that is that the rationale behind the 4/10 score wasn't really given, except that "it's not Dirt"

 

[blakep267]

You shouldn't. Unless expectations were really low or US picked up a huge amount of slack. It only sold like 4-5k copies in the first week in the UK. After 3 weeks, it's total sales are only about 6-7k.

I don't think the budget was high for that game at all

 

[Ninja Scooter]

Reading through some of these responses, I have to say, go read the actual Gamespot interview in its entirety. Puts a little context to the conversation. It's not like Phil Spencer did the interview specifically to say this about reviews. He also mentioned one site gave FH3 and 3/10 or 4/10. Point was, really low score reviews are click bait and I completely agree. ReCore is a 7/10 easily. You give a game a score of 3 or 4, it should basically be trash, and ReCore is not trash.

This is why what Phil says is bullshit. It feeds into crap opinions like this. Like who are you to say definitively what score a game should be? Or how reviewers should or shouldn't use the entire grading scale? Do you just not want them to make waves? Just give every functional game a 7? Opinions like this are what make reviews worthless. You are just looking for validation, not information. If you have your mind made up that Recore is a 7 what are you even reading reviews for? Why do you care? Disagreeing with someone else's opinion is fine, but then to turn around and try and claim that someone must have some ulterior motives just because they don't like a game as much as you, is stupid as hell.

 

[Primethius]

I don't think the budget was high for that game at all

The budget would have to be more on the indie side to make a 4-5k debut good.

 

[SicSemperTyrannis]

Even if we're talking about Forza Horizon 3, does it matter? If someone were running that game on PC, watching their 1080 choke on it, having stutters and crashes and BSoDs, would you begrudge them giving it a 4? "Yeah, sure the game crashes every 30 minutes for you, but if you could play it properly, you'd recognize it was better than a 4/10." People have differing experiences, and put value in different places.

We either take people at their word, that they are giving their honest opinion about reviews, or we don't trust any of them. It's a slippery slope to pick and choose the people we think have valid critical opinions, and if we ascribe some ulterior motive to every reviewer who does something we don't like, we'll end up with a very short list of milquetoast, "trustworthy" reviewers. Unless there's proof-positive that someone intentionally knocks down review scores to drive clicks or that they are driving at some other purpose, we shouldn't be doing that. Phil should be smart enough to know he's playing with fire when saying things like this.

That would be all well and good if the 4/10 review complained about poor performance or anything of the sort. There is a 3 point gap between the lowest score and the next lowest. Read the review in question and it seems suspect: Link. It seems like the reviewer just doesn't like arcade style racers and takes it out on the game in the score. Reviews should be a bit more objective than that.

 

[Alebrije]

The only mistake Phil made was not hiring Sean Murray for talking about this game.

 

[fallingdove]

Really Phil?

This whole back and forth is somewhat entertaining though.

When Sony releases/announces something that is not favorably received, Microsoft is the first to jump on the inter webs and spew console war nonsense.

When Microsoft releases/announces something that is not favorably received - "Stop picking on us, the reviews aren't accurate, we are going to put a stop to console wars"

What a joke.

 

[Vince DiCola]

As an Xbox user the weak first and second party output by Xbox is disappointing to say the least and this doesn't help.

Come on Phil, if Record was a better game it would have reviewed and sold better, same goes for Quantum Break

 

[Bits N Pieces]

Can you take your little wank fest over the topic creator in private messages please?

Report the thread to a moderator if you think it's inaccurate.

The thread is a shit show as it is, does it really matter? He said, she said kind of stuff or let's talk about what we think Phil was saying. It was never going to be a thread that generated thoughtful discourse and insightful commentary when the OP is slanting his agenda in the first post.

Post shit - get shit?

 

[SicSemperTyrannis]

Really Phil?

This whole back and forth is somewhat entertaining though.

When Sony releases/announces something that is not favorably received, Microsoft is the first to jump on the inter webs and spew console war nonsense.

When Microsoft releases/announces something that is not favorably received - "Stop picking on us, the reviews aren't accurate, we are going to put a stop to console wars"

What a joke.

I'm interested in some examples of both of these cases. This isn't an example of the latter either, read the interview and he isn't bemoaning low review scores for ReCore, but questioning the validity of a 4/10 for Forza Horizon 3, which I think is reasonable.

 

[deepio]

Gamespot does an interview with Phil Spencer, probably didn't get enough clicks.

So Gamespot posts another article taking snippets from the interview, this time providing their own interpretation. (He was actually talking about FH3 where a 4/10 definitely stood out, not Recore).

GAF member takes the bait and posts a thread, now everybody clicks on the article.

Gamespot wins.

 

[Woo-Fu]

Unless he's saying that all of those reviewers only do it to Xbox games I don't see the point.

 

[King Gilga]

Head of Xbox is human too, this make him more relatable.

This makes him look like a fool.

 

[RandomHopeInc]

I mean its true tho.

 

[Primethius]

Gamespot does an interview with Phil Spencer, probably didn't get enough clicks.

So Gamespot posts another article taking snippets from the interview, this time providing their own interpretation. (He was actually talking about FH3 where a 4/10 definitely stood out, not Recore).

GAF member takes the bait and posts a thread, now everybody clicks on the article.

Gamespot wins.

No, that's not the only way to interpret the interview.

This is the quote from the full interview:

On the reviews, honestly I thought some of the reviews were a little harsh in terms of their view on the game. But for us, inside, again I feel really proud to have the character, the story, the gameplay style, and the partnership with Armature and Inafune-san as part of our portfolio.

I didn't try to tell anybody that it was a ten. I think we knew, as with any games, that there are certain things… if we started from the beginning and we knew what we'd get, there's a couple of things we would've done slightly differently. But we're very proud of how the game ended up. And I think seven, eight, nine, like anywhere in there is fine. Three or four… I mean somebody gave Forza Horizon 3 a four. I think there's certain reviews that are written more to get clicked on than they are to actually accurately reflect the quality of the game, and that kind of bums me out.

My read of it was the same as Gamespots. He's talking about Recore. And he uses that particular review of Forza Horizon 3 as an example to reinforce his point.

 

[Scientist Supreme!]

I'm interested in some examples of both of these cases. This isn't an example of the latter either, read the interview and he isn't bemoaning low review scores for ReCore, but questioning the validity of a 4/10 for Forza Horizon 3, which I think is reasonable.

What's "reasonable" about it? Like many people here they can't possibly believe that someone doesn't like something they enjoy and must come with idiotic reasons to discredit them. Also, a review shouldn't be more objective because that kinda defeats the purpose of someone's review.

 

[ShockingAlberto]

I think we've all become aware of the very real phenomenon where everything we agree with is right and everything we don't agree with has nefarious motivations.

One time I was in line at Subway and the guy ahead of me ordered lettuce on his meatball sub. What an insane thing, I thought. Then I realized: he didn't do it because he liked lettuce on his sub. He did it so I would pay more attention to him. Who does this stranger think he is? What kind of terrible person he must be, I bet.

It was the most infuriating moment of my life.

 

[watdaeff4]

What's "reasonable" about it? Like many people here they can't possibly believe that someone doesn't like something they enjoy and must come with idiotic reasons to discredit them. Also, a review shouldn't be more objective because that kinda defeats the purpose of someone's review.

If you read a review and it gives a score of 4/10; would you expect it to give some reasons why besides "it's not DiRT"? Because I do, otherwise, to me it does appear to be a click bait review.

 

[entremet]

Didn't he just tell us we were holding our phones wrong and called it good until it became such a huge problem they finally had to come clean?

Yes, he also said other phones have similar issues too.

Dude totally reframed the narrative.

Call it shitty and manipulative, but the dude was doing his job as CEO.

Many times posters get upset at CEOs doing their jobs, which involves managing public perception.

 

[ShockingAlberto]

The guy at the car wash left some streaks on my window.

Somewhere between 99 - 100% sure he did it so I would talk about him online and he would get free advertising from it. I fucking hate that guy.

 

[SicSemperTyrannis]

What's "reasonable" about it? Like many people here they can't possibly believe that someone doesn't like something they enjoy and must come with idiotic reasons to discredit them. Also, a review shouldn't be more objective because that kinda defeats the purpose of someone's review.

Did you read the review in question or just accepting it because the person deserves an opinion? I'm not saying he doesn't deserve one, but just like every other game on any other platform, outliers shouldn't be accepted as the most reliable opinion. His issues with the game seem personal and superficial. I don't much care for racing games, let alone Forza, but I'd be hard pressed to suggest the game deserves a low score.