There's no doubt about it, with smartphones in everyone's possession, mobile gaming is on the rise. Everyone and their mother is well aware of games like Angry Birds, the Plants VS. Zombies series, and of course, Candy Crush Saga. A number of big name developers like Electronic Arts and Activision have been bringing in simplified versions of their most well-known games to the mobile market, reaching a wider audience. As a result, outlets and score sites like Metacritic have been forced to take notice, which, no pun intended, has changed the game a bit, but only a bit. Case in point, while it's been two years since Metacritic recognized and added a category for iOS games, but the site still doesn't have one for Apple's nearest rival operating system, Google's Android.
At the time of the new inclusion, John Davidson, the VP of Programming for the Interactive Gaming Division of DBS, told Pocketful of Megabytes that the he and Metacritic's founder Marc Doyle were looking into how reliable the Android Market would be as a source, that they "need to see ongoing, consistent coverage from a good number of outlets so that we have good data to pull from." Until then, Metacritic (and likely other sites following its cue) would be Android-less.
Two years on, that's still the case for Metacritic. I had heard of some negative reviews for the recently released Android version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and figured I'd check the site to do a little bit of comparing and contrasting between the Android and iOS versions, only to discover that there was no Android category. Curious, I sent out an e-mail asking about it, and Marc Doyle was good enough to get back to me about it, writing, "We take our cues from the critical community on which systems to cover. To this point, there has been much more coverage of iOS games than Android and the other mobile platforms. When I see a threshold number of outlets regularly reviewing Android games, we'll cover them."
When I asked Doyle to clarify "threshold," his response was, "it's tough to clarify. Put simply, there are hundreds of mobile games released ever day. If we can't get reviews to generate at least a few metascores every week, it's not a good fit." Fair enough. Like any other kind of news outlet out there, be it print, radio, television, or internet site, determining the subject to cover comes down to the type of traffic. It's the case with this site, and it's the case with Metacritic.
You can argue about which OS is better until you're blue in the face, but since releasing the iPhone, Apple has taken top dog as the company behind the hot new gizmo, later releasing the iPad, iTouch, and however many other "i" devices the company has. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who love their Samsung Galaxy or Ouya, but people don't line up around the block for the newest phone running Android the way their do for the new iPhone. Apple's iOS gadgets also have the distinction of getting a number of games first (like the recent Plants VS Zombies 2, Injustice: Gods Among Us, or Ridiculous Fishing) as timed exclusives, a la the DLC other developers release for particular consoles. While Android does have its own exclusives, they just don't seem to prove to be as popular as iOS games.
Until the tables are turned and Android overtakes iOS, expect its games to stay in relative obscurity.
