Amazon Reviews For PS4 Are Being Sabotaged

[DrRipley]

I was reading a few of the Amazon reviews yesterday for some amusement, and I was surprised to see how many 1 stars the PS4 was getting. Upon closer inspection, however, I discovered that a lot of the 1 star reviews weren't even from verified buyers, which means they probably didn't even purchase a console. I wonder why Amazon allows just anybody to leave a review, I would have expected one of the largest online retail stores in America to be much more vigilant. Nonetheless, like I said, the reviews are pretty amusing to read.

I highly recommend anyone who has 10-15 minutes to spare to check them out, a few of them are actually pretty creative or at least funny. I've seen some comments giving 1 star just because PS4 might turn out bad. Just to be clear, though, some of the bad reviews are from verified buyers as well, I'm just saying there's a lot of spam from those who aren't.




Social Media Making It Hard To Gauge Scope Of PS4's Technical Difficulties

The problem here is that a customer with a defective PlayStation 4 is almost certainly going to take to one of their social media platforms to complain about it at launch. A customer with a functional PS4 may do the same, but it’s a much lower chance they’ll helpfully broadcast that their PS4 is working, as that’s not an interesting story. This is if they say anything at all, if they’re too busy playing their new console.

Amazon, for example, has about 600 reviews of the PlayStation 4 launch edition up right now. The console is sitting at about 3 out of 5 stars, not due to middling scores, but because of 320 five star reviews and 260 one star reviews. Nearly all of the one star reviews are complaining about faulty hardware. Does that mean that the PS4 has a 40% failure rate? Of course not. It’s people finding an outlet to vent about their consoles not working (and there is the possibility some of these could be fake reviews from Xbox enthusiasts).

 

[CpmPanda]

Yeah, Social Media CAN be a bad thing, in fact, often times it is. I think Amazon should change a few things about their structure. For one, restrict reviews to people who have bought an item or have proof they bought it in order to ensure that the reviews are from people who don't just *READ* things on the internet then voice their opinion on it. In fact, a lot of people in my town, post bad reviews on their competition's google pages, facebook pages, etc. It's crappy and cheap :/

 

[RammsteinGamer]

I actually wonder if the number of defective systems is blown up to look bigger just by trolls and fanboys by other systems. It's hard to get an accurate guess because of that.

 

[jardantuan]

I actually wonder if the number of defective systems is blown up to look bigger just by trolls and fanboys by other systems. It's hard to get an accurate guess because of that.

It wouldn't be a surprise if that's true. There's nothing wrong with being a 'fanboy' and being 'loyal' to a company - we all are to some extent - but some people take it far too far. I don't know what it is, but people feel the need to justify their own decisions by ridiculing the choices of others, and it's absurd. There's nothing wrong with saying that you don't like Nintendo, or you don't like Sony, but I've seen people display an active hatred towards a given console and its fanbase.

It's easy enough for Amazon to fix - only allow people to rate/review a product if they purchased through Amazon, or alternatively don't count reviews to the averages if the reviewer didn't purchase through Amazon.

 

[SpaceTiger]

Some are definitely sabotaging PS4's Amazon reviews. The same is likely to happen for the Xbox One.

It's easy enough for Amazon to fix - only allow people to rate/review a product if they purchased through Amazon, or alternatively don't count reviews to the averages if the reviewer didn't purchase through Amazon.

That's too much like right. Amazon should've done that ages ago...but it is a great idea.

 

[Stuck_X_Button]

I can see Xbox One's review being sabotaged after the mention that PS4's reviews have been sniped at.

 

[baracksyndel]

I would take any overly negative reviews with a grain of salt but yeah some of them are legitimate. Sony does have consoles that are bricking, and some of those bricks are Amazon's fault. But yeah I imagine a good chunk of those bad reviews are written by bored trolls.

 

[jbepp]

Probably just a group of people with nothing else to do.
I don't trust Amazon reviews too much anyways.

 

[Fyreglow]

You're going to get that on any console. I usually don't pay attention to reviews, so it doesn't matter to me.

 

[Legendoflore]

You really should read only verified account reviews if your going to trust anything that those people say on Amazon. And anyway the PS4 is doing fine, if anything slows done it's sales then it's going to be the lackluster launch titles. Once the big name games start releasing and the first price drop comes, then you'll see sales go way up.

 

[themarting]

Yea, i think its pretty bad that theyre going on leaving bad reviews just because. I mean even if theyre xbox fans, what do they REALLY get out of leaving bad reviews on xbox stuff?

 

[Tomba]

You really should read only verified account reviews if your going to trust anything that those people say on Amazon.

Agreed. Although I read the unverified account reviews for comedy sometimes. It really depends on the product (like the pocket hose or something). For a game console? Never.

 

[corporatenoun]

I wouldn't rule out the possibility that sabotage reviews could be procured by their main competitor. It wouldn't be the first time a rival company took to trashing their opponents via similar means. That being said, I think it's more likely that there are fanboys on both sides of the console "war" who are willing to take their own time out of the day to write bad things about the other console.

 

[DrRipley]

It's easy enough for Amazon to fix - only allow people to rate/review a product if they purchased through Amazon, or alternatively don't count reviews to the averages if the reviewer didn't purchase through Amazon.

I thought this too, and was surprised that a big brand like Amazon would have such a crappy review system and still be successful. I am guessing that this probably brought a lot more attention to it, so maybe they will address it soon. I doubt they will do so by Xbox One launch, though, and I can't wait to see the reviews on those.

 

[sidd230]

I remeber reading this one review where this guy was shouting how the PS4 set his house on fire.

 

[Legendoflore]

While the internet can be accurate and I'll give them credit and say that their accurate a lot. You can't trust reviews on amazon for a lot of things. And a lot of those reviews do seem to be trolls though I wouldn't discount every single one just because a lot of them seem to be haters. If people want to know if there's something wrong with the PS4 then there are plenty of accurate news being reported on video game websites and by the mainstream media.

 

[SpiralArchitect]

Just a bunch of random fans with nothing better to do and a few poor souls who were unlucky to get faulty consoles. That sums up how these ratings seem to be working.

 

[Legendoflore]

You can't reason with trolls and they pull this kind of stuff all the time. Are there problems with the PS4? Sure, but a lot of those reviews aren't true and the margin of error of PS4 problems is low enough that Sony is fine. If anything, Amazon needs to fix their reviewing system because we all know that there are things that get positive reviews and don't deserve them.

 

[Linkzelda41]

It’s amazing how people still attempt to do these kinds of things. Out of all the things they could possibly do with their own existence, they choose to devalue a product, especially when they haven’t even purchased it as yet?

And combine that with people who may be extremely stingy with their cash, it almost creates an unnecessary scare that wouldn’t even lead to a significant loss in sales in the first place. I honestly don’t know how a person can get gratification from doing something like this.

 

[dragoonblade]

Trolls are the worst because they do it for the love of ruining things for other people. But I think that enough of the public are aware of how shady the Amazon rating system can be that they know not to take these reviews to seriously. The PS4 has it's own issues that they need to fix before more people purchase it, these reviews won't do any more damage.