 All right, we're gonna have a little episode of outside the box quick because something happened here with a Certain person from Xbox and an IGN reviewer that I just want to briefly touch on So super's lucky super lucky stale Came out recently on Xbox and some people have given it decent reviews others have not a Certain person from IGN was one of those people that didn't In fact that person's name is Ryan McCaffrey He did not give it a favorable review It was you gave it a pretty poor review and said that it's a pass basically that people probably shouldn't waste their money on the game This person Responded to a tweet. I mean, here's the full context So this guy named Mark Yabera put up a tweet from Eurogamer showing off a Lucky's Tale review And this other guy responded so while really according to Ryan the guy from IGN the game is bad I'll give it a whirl opinions and all Robert Garcia Responded by saying IGN reviews are the worst the game is currently rated a 4.7 out of 5 on the Xbox store If you let reviews influence your gaming at least go with her views written by actual gamers Not paid so-called journalist and Ryan himself Ryan McCaffrey the guy who wrote the IGN review fire back by saying this Actual gamers on the Xbox store don't even have to play the game to leave a review and I know about that That's actually a flaw in the Xbox store pretty much anybody can review the game And then he goes on to say actual critics and journalists don't quite think so highly of the game And then he links the Xbox one medic critic score for it, which is not very good But see none of this matters right that's all that in that self is fine. That's just fans being fans and LOL IGN 7.8 too much water blah blah blah blah blah right fans are just doing what they do We get some of that crap here at Nintendo Prime But here is what's interesting Shannon Loftus The GM of Microsoft Studios publishing responded to Man responded to mr. Ryan McCaffrey and said this Ryan. I appreciate your review I thought you made some good points. You don't need to actively discourage people from playing the game though and Here in lies the issue that we're gonna talk about here on outside the box is here is a person high up at Microsoft telling a game critic that they don't need to actively discourage people from playing the game Essentially what he's saying is the review is good But you shouldn't tell people not to buy the game in the review Which kind of defeats the purpose of a review right in many cases a review is trying to determine if other people should spend money on that game and If Ryan McCaffrey, which he did conclude that the game isn't very good and people probably shouldn't buy the game um It's very interesting to have someone high up at Microsoft tell Ryan that he shouldn't do that now Obviously they're not taking review copies away from IGN. They're not forcing IGN to change the score of the game And I know there's been a lot of thought out there that all companies pay IGN and other other places to give higher review scores And blah blah which clearly isn't the case especially when you see here That someone from Microsoft is a little upset that Ryan is telling people not to buy the game But it's just an interesting conversation around What's the purpose of reviews and should people high up at companies like Microsoft be telling reviewers How to review games basically saying you can have all these criticisms, but you shouldn't conclude by telling people not to buy a game It makes me wonder what is Microsoft in this case or this person that Microsoft actually think the purpose of reviews are Because it's not just feedback and criticism. That's for the developers in the feedback and criticism About the game is to inform potential consumers and if the information present makes Ryan want to suggest that people shouldn't buy the game That's totally fine. Now to be fair Shannon does later tweet Also folks, you know because there's obviously defense force come out for Microsoft and Shannon Shannon did tweet later saying also folks, please lay off Ryan He works incredibly hard and does great things for gaming and gamers because obviously she wasn't ill intent here She wasn't intending to make you know, Microsoft fanboys go after Ryan for his review of the game and the thing is they're gonna go up to Ryan they have to go after several more outlets because The Metacritic score is not good. So I Throw this at you guys What role do video game publishers in this case, I think Microsoft publishes game Have in telling reviewers how to review games Obviously the big thing here is that the publishers control who gets review copies of games, right? So they can literally tell IGN sorry no more review copies of Microsoft Xbox games that are exclusive Of course, they're not going to do that Because there would be major backlash From the gaming community, but it's still interesting to see someone in this high-up position at Microsoft being like hey man Don't tell people not to buy our game. Even though you just got done complimenting the review I mean literally says Ryan. I appreciate your review. I thought you made some good points You don't need to actively discourage people from playing the game though It's it's not just actively discouraging people from playing the game He's actively discouraging people from buying the game saying their money is basically spent elsewhere So I don't know. It's just a weird situation Thankfully Nintendo doesn't find themselves mixed up in situations like this very often, but it's not the first time I've heard of this I've seen other publishers sometimes even developers trying to tell reviewers what they can and can't say In regards to whether or not people should buy games I've seen NDAs and review embargoes So you're not allowed to give this game a score And this also gets the point where like some you know publishers will actively avoid giving copies of games to Reviewers that they know are not going to put you know Review their game well because they want to bump their medic credit score. In fact, we found out again It's so silly. This is still part of the industry But that certain publishers out there are still giving incentives and bonuses based on medic critic scores Which to me just seems absolutely ridiculous, especially since medic critic scores are completely weighted to favor specific outlets That doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing. It's just not something that you should really base Like oh, let's put it this way Let's say you release a game that gets a 70 a medic critic would sell 5 million copies You don't get a bonus on those 5 million copies sold because your medic credit rating didn't hit 85 or something That's why it's ridiculous. It should just be BS and sales like if the game sells so many units Hey, you should get a bonus for having a game exceed expectations for sales Or exceed expectations even for revenue if they want to base it on a revenue model Hey, how much money do we want to make from this game if we make more than that? We should get a payout I think that feels a lot more fair than basing things bonuses on medic critic You know, you guys let me know what you think about all of this in the comments below because I personally stand by The stance that I don't think publishers or game devs or anything should be telling reviewers One how to review their games and two what they're allowed to say about the games in terms of their opinions on it and Three they definitely should not be telling them that it's not okay to tell people not to buy the game because That's the whole purpose of reviews to consumers to inform them with information and opinions If they think the game is worth spending money on anyways folks That's why take on it. You let me know your hot take down in the comments below I am Nathan Ruffa gents from Nintendo Prime and if you liked this video You know what to do and if you dislike the video that is alright as well dislike that video Subscribe for more content and you know what folks I will catch you in the next one