Former God of War art director Rafael Grassetti has said that PlayStation developers like Naughty Dog and Santa Monica Studio aim for a score of 90/100 on Metacritic. Grassetti made this statement during a Portuguese interview with Flow Games, as a result of which some of his comments were lost in translation and misconstrued as Sony “demanding” high Metacritic scores. Not quite.
PlayStation dev bonuses aren’t tied to Metacritic performance
Grassetti said (via ResetEra) that while Metacritic scores are important to developers, Sony does not tie any performance bonuses to metascores. He also said that the company has confidence in PlayStation Studios, and does not rush them to release games. That said, like other game companies, Sony does have an eye on Metacritic performance.
According to Grassetti, it’s hard to gauge how well a game will do review-wise until at least the final stretch of development because games don’t take shape until around the last year of production.
Metacritic scores have been a point of contention within the games industry, with reports that some companies tie performance bonuses to Metacritic scores irrespective of sales. Former Days Gone developers claim that Sony didn’t greenlight a sequel partly because game didn’t do well on Metacritic.
