While many publishers and game developers alike have derided Metacritic, there seems to be one holdout. During Nintendo’s investor meeting, President Satoru Iwata focused on Metacritic’s scores: 19 of Nintendo’s titles received at least an 85/100, while the combined competition, Iwata states, have less than half that, at eight titles.

Iwata stated during part of his speech:

One notable thing is that big titles released during and after autumn both for Nintendo 3DS and for Wii U maintained healthy sales and produced significant results in the year-end. Another thing is that we have received high evaluations of the quality of these titles.

Foreign website Metacritic.com is well known for its Metascore system that shows the average score out of 100 from various game media and websites [and] also takes reviews from users and discloses the average figure as the User Score.

We must understand that even among game players, majority of consumers that visit Metacritic.com are considered avid game fans. However, if a game receives both a high Metascore and a high User Score, many consumers use this as a guide to judge the quality of the game.

Iwata wasn’t completely positive, saying that he would “not take the Metacritic.com Metascores and User Scores as the absolute tell-all index”. Still, his sentiment toward the ratings aggregator was generally positive. With Metacritic having faced criticism for years, and game scores going out of fashion, Iwata’s views may be a dying breed.