Which platform has the best games?

Fan boys all over the Internet are claiming that their platform is the best one and that their platform has the best games. I recently read this rather inconclusive article on a Norwegian  gaming site and I decided to put these claims to the test myself.

It is impossible to test whether a game is better than another game in an objective way. So the best way to do this is to base the comparison on as many subjective reviews as possible. I went over to Metacritics and extracted the data for the PC, PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360. Since the 360 was released in 2005, I will only include the years 2005-2008. The total number of titles is found in the table below.

	2005	2006	2007	2008	Total
PC	234	244	219	204	901
PS3		22	103	158	283
Wii		33	124	210	367
Xbox 360	33	106	192	224	555
Total	267	405	638	796	2106

We see that the PC has consistently had over 200 games per year but that both the 360 and the Wii have catched up, the PS3 is lagging a bit behind when it comes to the number of games per year. However, quantity is as we see below not necessarily quality.

All games

The PS3 has the highest average game score for any of the platforms, the PC and 360 are not that far behind while the Wii is struggeling quite a log way behind the others. The high number of games for the Wii did not do it any good when it comes to the average game score.

	2005	2006	2007	2008	Total
PC	69,3	66,8	67,7	67,6	67,8
PS3		71,4	71,9	69,8	70,7
Wii		63,4	60,1	61,8	61,4
Xbox 360	74,8	69,6	67,2	66,3	67,7
Total	69,9	67,5	66,7	66,1	67,1

The scores above are found through calculating the average of all the game scores for all the games on the individual platforms. This includes both platform exclusives and cross platform games. The average game score does not count much for most people. Few have time to play all the around 200 games a year per platform anyway. The most important thing to me is the number of good, great and in particular outstanding games on the platform I have. If the platform has a lot of outstanding games why would I care if it has some crappy ones as well?

Range	Platform	2005	2006	2007	2008	Total
Good	PC	70	59	51	49	229
	PS3		6	30	35	71
	Wii		10	21	34	65
	Xbox 360	15	22	48	47	132
Good Total		85	97	150	165	497
Great	PC	45	48	36	43	172
	PS3		7	29	42	78
	Wii		2	7	25	34
	Xbox 360	9	28	33	41	111
Great Total		54	85	105	151	395
Outstanding	PC	6	5	10	4	25
	PS3			3	6	9
	Wii		1	3	4	8
	Xbox 360		3	8	8	19
Outstanding Total		6	9	24	22	61
Total		145	191	279	338	953

As we see in the table above, the PC and the 360 has the highest number of good games (game score 70-79). The number of great games (80-89) is a tie between the 360, PC and the PS3, while the PC and the 360 is perhaps slighly in front of the PS3 for the humber of outstanding games (>89). The Wii is again struggeling behind the others by a significant margin. The PC, 360 and the PS3 provided its users with about 50 great or outstanding games in 2008 and this should be enough for anyone.

Platform Exclusive

Then we are down to the platform exclusive games to really see which has the best games, just for itself. The number of exlusive games for each platform are listed below and we see that the PC has had the highest number of exclusive games all years but 2008. The Wii had in 2008 more than 150 exclusive games. The PS3 on the other hand has had quite few exclusive games so far.

	2005	2006	2007	2008	Total
PC	222	202	153	134	711
PS3		12	32	48	92
Wii		21	85	154	260
Xbox 360	22	55	96	98	271
Total	244	290	366	434	1334

We see similar results for the average scores as we did when counting cross platform games as well. The PS3 has the highest average score but we must have in mind that it had less hand half of the exclusive games the other platforms had. The difference between the PS3 and the 360 is however somewhat larger now.

	2005	2006	2007	2008	Total
PC	68,7	65,7	66,7	66,6	67
PS3		66,3	71,8	72,5	71,4
Wii		64,3	59,2	60,7	60,5
Xbox 360	73,4	65,2	63,8	62,7	64,4
Total	69,2	65,6	64,6	64,3	65,5

When looking at the number of good, great, and outstanding games one could argue that the PC has the highest variety of platform exclusive games, while the PS3 has the lowest number of good and outstanding games. The lack of truly outstanding exclusives on the PS3 could perhaps explain why it has sold a bit lower than expected (by Sony).

	Platform	2005	2006	2007	2008	Total
Good	PC	66	48	33	33	180
	PS3		1	11	12	24
	Wii		8	15	25	48
	Xbox 360	10	10	20	18	58
Good Total		76	67	79	88	310
Great	PC	39	34	24	24	121
	PS3		3	8	16	27
	Wii		1	5	16	22
	Xbox 360	4	8	11	11	34
Great Total		43	46	48	67	204
Outstanding	PC	6	4	7	2	19
	PS3				2	2
	Wii		1	3	2	6
	Xbox 360			3	4	7
Outstanding Total		6	5	13	10	34
Total		125	118	140	165	548

Conclusions

The PS3 has the highest average score for its games. This is however mainly caused by the lack of crappy games for the platform. The Wii on the other hand seems to have plenty of those crappy games. The 360 and the PC have the higheste number of good, great, and outstanding exclusive and cross platform games. Nevertheless, regardless of which platform you have or decide to pick up it will have plenty of good games. It will however be interesting to see how 2009 turns out as the PS3 is really starting to get up to pace with some strong exclusives like Killzone 2, Gran Turismo 5, God of War 3, Heavy Rain, Uncharted 2 and so on.