According to GameIndustry.biz, EA chief John Riccitiello believes that there is "cadre of Journalists" who refuse to give EA's repetitive year on year Sports titles the benefit of the doubt. He goes on to imply that "anybody with a pen" (read: any idiot with a pen, in politcially correct terms) can post a review which will be included in the Metacritic algorithm. Now, it may well seem that this comment was meant to cast dispersions on smaller online gaming publications (quite possibly even Destructoid), but in my own opinion, there are far more idiots with pens writing about videogames in the New York Times and the other "ten professionals" which used to make up the most of Metacritics scores in the beginning.

If Riccitiello wants the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the EA Sports line up, perhaps he should actually read some of these 'unfair' reviews and actually take some advice from them. His assertations that there is some kind of organised conspiracy against EA Sports is completely unfounded, I loved FIFA '08, sdame as I've loved every other FIFA, but he can't expect the same score every year just because he insists on making the same game every year. He then goes on to make a rather pointedly worded statement, which I can only assume (though it's a strong assumption given how many games in the last two months recieved mostly tens) is directed at GTA4 and MGS4:

'everybody has to rate it a hundred' thing going on - that happens sometimes even when they may not, based on the review, have played more than the first fifteen minutes of the game."

A fair point, in fairness John, and one which should be discussed openly within the gaming press (though I think he is being rather liberal in his use of hyperbole by mentioning "fifteen minutes" as a review time), but does he really think that the same kind of comparisons can be drawn, scorewise, between masterpieces (which in fairness are not without their flaws) such as GTA4 and a couple of Sports games which haven't innovated significantly since we moved from sprites? Riccitiello apparently then went on to say that he felt that the upcoming lineup of Madden, NASCAR, NBA etc were "better than last year". No shit Sherlock, it sounds like you'd expect us to buy them even if they weren't (which they're often not.

Undoubtably, some of you will say that I am being unfair to EA, to Riccitiello and to Sports games in general, but this is not the case. As far as being unfair to EA (and by extension, Riccitiello), I have enjoyed hundreds of games published or developed by EA over the years, and as far as being unfair to Sports games, I am an avid fan of both FIFA and Pro Evo not to mention a veritable Football Manager addict. Just... ease up on the conspiracy theories John, and concentrate on actually making these game worth a 9 or 10.