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Comment by hugofirth | Hacker News Reader

Quite aside from the content - I thought the review itself was a very nice piece of design (The animations that I thought would annoy me ended up being a nice touch).

One thing I take issue with is the completely arbitrary nature of the rating at the end. Why bother giving the platform a rating at all at this stage - it exists in a vacuum. Only time will tell how Sony's latest offering, along with its attempts at a platform, will stack up against Steam and Microsoft. Besides that - there seemed no clear criteria for the points system whatsoever.

It is at times like these that I am reminded of the "IGN: Fair. 10/10" meme.

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They cover that at the end of the review. It's basically the score of the system as it is today. It's a fair way to judge something that people will consider purchasing and wanting to have fun with right away. I wouldn't want to buy a console only to hope I have fun with it in 2 years (buy it in 2 years instead). [1]

"But the PlayStation 4's focus on gaming — and only gaming — is undermined by a distinct lack of compelling software. That failing is sure to improve — better games and more of them will appear on the PlayStation 4 — but right now, this is a game console without a game to recommend it. Early adopters of the PS4 this fall are buying potential energy. We're just waiting for a place to spend it."

[1] http://www.polygon.com/a/ps4-review/conclusion

I understand the concept of scoring the system as it is today. On the other hand I disagree emphatically with the premise for doing so.

A "general impressions" wrap-up paragraph would be fine. A rating system with a very low granularity (Thumbs up/even/down for example) would even be acceptable.

A score of 7.5 implies, at the very least, a granularity of 20. This is only useful in a case where you have either 20 binary criteria, or ~5 criteria with some kind of sub-scoring system. Where, or what, are these criteria? Are they implicitly, yet obviously, defined through the content or structure of the article? No.

I'm not defending the PS4 - I am ranting at the profligacy of meaningless scoring systems throughout the entire video games industry.

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