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Metacritic's mission is to help you make an informed decision about how to spend your money on entertainment.

What began as a simple idea back in the summer of 1999--to both provide access to and summarize the vast amount of entertainment criticism available online--has evolved into one of the Web's best resources for critical information about film, video, music, games, books and television. (Well, of course we think it's one of the best, but you can also see for yourself what others are saying about Metacritic.)

That original idea quickly gave birth to a company, which then (not as quickly) gave birth to a website, Metacritic.com, which officially launched in January, 2001 thanks to the hard work of its three founding members, all former attorneys who were happy to find a more constructive (but less profitable) use of their time. Metacritic.com has continued to evolve since its launch, constantly adding to its ever-growing database of reviews, launching a wireless version of the site, and undergoing redesigns in early 2003 and late 2004. In 2005, Metacritic joined the CNET family of websites after an acquisition by CNET Networks, Inc.

You are currently looking at the results of that hard work. Metacritic.com achieves its stated mission--helping consumers make an informed decision about how to spend their money on entertainment--by providing access to thousands of reviews in a number of entertainment genres. We feel strongly that multiple opinions are better than one, and also that the presentation of these critical opinions must be done in a concise, organized and easy-to-understand manner in order for them to be useful. We also encourage our users to dig deeper on matters that interest them by providing links to full reviews whenever possible. Finally, we believe firmly in providing a pleasant, popup-free user experience for our visitors.

Since its inception, Metacritic has provided a cross-section of reviews from a carefully-screened group of the most respected critics for the latest (as well as earlier) releases in film, video, music, books and games in a clean, user-friendly manner. And only Metacritic uses Metascores to combine all of the individual critic scores into an overall grade for each item, so users can gauge the critical consensus at a glance. In fact, our scoring system is so unique (unique, complicated--what's the difference?) that it merits its own explanation page.

Metacritic, through CNET, does sell advertising space throughout the site, but at no time do we allow advertisers to dictate any content (or scores) that you see on the site. Advertising sales are handled by CNET representatives, and are kept completely separate from the editorial staff.

As we did while we were a tiny startup and continue to do now that we have greater resources at our disposal, we strive to develop practical content that we ourselves would (and do) use. We hope that you find it useful as well. Contact us and let us know what you think!

At Metacritic, We Deal With Criticism!