Kelly Wand's column about meaningless game review scores in the August issue of Computer Games completely misses the point. Yes, review scores are meaningless, but not for the reason Wand thinks. Reviews themselves are pretty much meaningless in the game industry, period. By the time a review comes out--even online--the retailers have already decided which games will be the "hits" and the rest get price protection. The only editorial coverage that matters these days is preview coverage... and that wins you an equally meaningless, but critically important, "score" on GameRankings or GameStats.

The retail buyers are so lazy now they are using these two sites to determine which games will get shelf space and which games they can safely ignore, because taking meeting after meeting with all those vice presidents from all those game companies just gets too tiresome. But all these decisions get made months before the game is done or the "reviewable beta" is even ready. Planagrams for Christmas 2005 were mostly decided by the close of E3 in May (at the EA, Microsoft, and Sony booths). Any leftover space will be determined by preview coverage over the summer. With very few exceptions, retail buyers are not gamers. They'll use whatever easy, objective-looking tool they can to make their decisions, and reviews come way too late in the game.