History
Metacritic was launched in January 2001 by Marc Doyle, along with his sister Julie Doyle Roberts and a classmate from the University of Southern California law school, Jason Dietz. Rotten Tomatoes was already compiling movie reviews at the time, but Doyle, Roberts, and Dietz "saw an opportunity to cover a broader range of media." They sold Metacritic to CNET in 2005. CNET and Metacritic are owned by the CBS Corporation.
Nick Wingfield of The Wall Street Journal wrote in September 2007, "Mr. Doyle, 36, is now a senior product manager at CNET but he also acts as games editor of Metacritic." Speaking of video games, Doyle said, "A site like ours helps people cut through...unobjective promotional language." He also said "By giving consumers, and web users specifically, early information on the objective quality of a game, not only are they more educated about their choices, but it forces publishers to demand more from their developers, license owners to demand more from their licensees, and eventually, hopefully, the games get better." Doyle said, "I don't want to overstate our role in this area, but we're highlighting the review process", which he thinks was not taken as seriously when unconnected magazines and websites were providing their reviews in isolation.
In August 2010, Metacritic website's appearance was heavily revamped. The reaction to the new format from existing Metacritic users was overwhelmingly negative.
Read more about this topic: Metacritic
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