As you may or may not have heard, EA's John Riccitiello bemoaned the fact that EA's scores are going down the tubes on sites like Metacritic and GameRankings. He blames it on the fact that anyone with a pen can rate a game now, which is a true fact... but it's not the reason the scores are still so low. Of course, after that, he goes on to state that they don't get "the benefit of the cult - 'everybody has to rate it a hundred' thing going on". Again, he has a point here that journalists can get wrapped up and just go with everyone else when it comes to rating games (see: GTA IV and MGS4 on every other site besides Destructoid), but once again, that's not why. In fact, I'm going to tell John why his scores are going down the tubes so quickly"

IT'S BECAUSE YOU KEEP PUMPING OUT THE SAME CRAP OVER AND OVER AGAIN WITH MINIMAL CHANGES.

For example, I reviewed NHL 08 on the PS2 and found out it was the same as NHL 04 on the PS2. Not the same in the sense that the controls were similar or game modes were similar... but that the graphics, textures, everything was identical except they threw in some minor league teams and changed up the rosters. Should I have expected it, maybe. Did it piss me off? You bet. The fact that nothing was changed just boggled my mind and only affirmed that they in fact do shovel the same game out there every year and don't give a rat's ass about it.

On top of the fact that EA's games stay virtually the same, their QA and debugging teams must suck balls because they end up shipping games with tons of bugs that sometimes make the games unplayable. Not every game is like this... but you know what? I have a right to tear EA a new one when I'm playing my UEFA 08 review copy on my 360 and the graphics suddenly go crazy and people turn invisible and I can't see shit. Tough luck, EA. Maybe if you wouldn't put out the same bullcrap everytime, and makes games worse each year, then I wouldn't have a reason to rip you a new one. You've proven you can make compelling and awesome games like Boom Blox and .skate before, games that don't have the issues with bugs. Why the hell can't you do the same for Madden? Why can't you do the same for Army of Two?

Apparently, the public doesn't seem to care, though. In a recent Game Informer survey (which I will get to tomorrow), EA was the third most trusted publisher, behind Ubisoft (WTF?!?!?!) and Capcom. I'll talk more about that survey tomorrow, but it is kind of startling and makes me wonder if the public doesn't realize what's going on. If not, someone ought to wake them up and tell them.