ESRB Ratings Across the Consoles Charted

Gamasutra has up an analysis by Matt Matthews looking at the distribution of ESRB ratings across several generations of consoles. He makes particular note of Nintendo's efforts with the GameCube and Wii: "On the GameCube over 51% of the games were rated E and 6.1% were rated E10+. This makes the GameCube appear to be more friendly for younger gamers ... From the beginning Nintendo has wanted to attract non-traditional gamers with its Wii hardware and software. Perhaps as a result of the manufacturer's strategy, many Wii games have been designed to appeal to -- and therefore are rated for -- a general audience. Over 82% of the Wii catalog is either rated E or E10+. Only 3.2% are rated M, less than half the rate on Nintendo's previous console, GameCube. Still, that 3.2% is significantly higher than the rates on either the Nintendo DS or the Game Boy Advance." Matthews makes a few offhand comments about the analysis on the Curmudgeon Gamer site, as well.

Comments

controller methods

[theMerovingian]

I bet Wii has to be more careful about the type of games it allows. If you had a ninja assassin game where you have to pantomime garroting a guard with the controller wire, it might cause parents to get upset!

Re:controller methods

[zuvembi]

If you had a ninja assassin game where you have to pantomime garroting a guard with the controller wire, it might cause parents to get upset!

So, you mean exactly what you do in Godfather : Blackhand Edition for Wii? Yes, one of your weapons is a garotte. You sneak up behind the guard, do a jerk apart of the nunchuk and wiimote, and then saw back and forth. It's a little disturbing the first few times you do it.

Of course, that would probably be the reason that it's an M-rated game that parents are advised not to buy young children. Of course, some people are stupid.

How is boxing not violent?

[MosesJones]

One thing that has confused me on the "E" rating is that for some reason boxing isn't considered violent. In Europe its a 7+ game but in the US its "Everyone". Now sure talking a shotgun to someone's head is definately at the top end scale of violence but surely pounding someone's head with your fists even after they start to go down is pretty damned violent too.

Now its not an M, but is punching people in the head really "E"? Even if its done cartoon style?

Re:How is boxing not violent?

[MBGMorden]

If it was street fighting, then yes, punching someone repeatedly is violent. However if done in a controlled environment however, it's a sport.

Re:How is boxing not violent?

[Anonymous Coward]

So where does it end, Jack?

Is Hockey only intended for a mature audience because of the body checking? What about football? They literally run into each other and TACKLE one another to the ground... ON PURPOSE.

Seriously, you people need to give this a rest.

Re:How is boxing not violent?

[G Fab]

You know what? Baloney.

Society gets to decide what is outrageous. We don't have to follow black and white rules and be logically consistent.

Society is outraged by shotgunning of people. Society is not outraged by two people agreeing to box each other for sport. A few extreme pacifists do say that this is akin to other violence sine you are physically harming another person, and they're right. It's violence, but society isn't outraged by it.

That's why boxing can be an innocent game for kids, because society isn't worried that kids will grown up thinking it's ok to box people who agree to participate for sport. They do frown on kids growing up thinking shooting other peopleis ok, and thus restrict very violent games to parents, so parents can be involved enough to tell kids.. hey, that's a game and this stuff isn't ok in real life.

Frankly, the system seems to work. I think society reinforces the message that boxing is ok and murder isn't. Some parents buy GTA for their kids and don't involved themselves enough to tell the kids that its topics are things that are not OK in real life... and sometimes these kids are sufficiently insulated from society that they don't get that same message... but kids with such awful childhoods aer probably going to be bad guys anyway.

I don't think it's fair to conflate all violence by simplistic definitions. They have to be cultural and based on societal outrage, because that's not informative of the true nature of the activity than rote logic application.

Re:As Expected

[arodland]

Because the 13-18 crowd is the largest audience by far for "17+" games. People who are actually "mature" tend to find most of them less interesting.

Re:As Expected

[Aladrin]

Because that's the -rating-, not the audience. Teens buy M-rated games. Whether they do so directly, or by fraud, or by getting someone else to... It doesn't matter. They buy them.

Take it a step further...

[The Barking Dog]

...and give us the statistics on the percentage of overall sales for a console by ESRB rating. "M" rated games may be a smaller percentage of overall games for the PS3 or Xbox 360, but I'll wager that they account for a large percentage of the overall sales.

Well just to note

[Sycraft-fu]

"E" is somewhat the equivalent of "7+". Despite the "Everyone" designation the low end rating is actually "EC", Early Childhood.

In terms of why I think it mostly has to do with societal norms. There's isn't a perfectly objective way to rate content, just can't happen. As such ratings generally reflect the conceptions of the society they are in. That is to say what people would generally consider acceptable at a given level. This is also why nudity gets hit so hard in US ratings systems. The US has always had an issue with nudity (look in to the people who originally settled the US if you want to know why) as such it gets rated harsher than it might in other parts of the world.