Thats already there isnt it? You can rate a review helpful or not and those with the most votes are shown first followed by those with less or negative votes.
its very very easy to ignore the obviously stupid and un-informed review comments and to heed the worth-while ones. And as far as "fake" five star reviews, I'd expect there are just as many fake one star reviews so That likely balances out in the end. I like the star rating system alot and any time I've taken a chance on a game that had tons of 5 star ratings and very few one star ratings I've been very satisfied with the purchase so it works for me... getting rid of the user reviews would be a mistake afaic...
The lack of users comments and rating, stupids or not, makes the App Store cold and not friendly. Also if I can't flame anymore a game that irritated me I'll have start be much more picky on my buying choices.
A thumbs up/thumbs down system like Youtube would be great. Reviews are a must though. Reviews are still here (in the UK store at least) but a thumbs system would still be nice
Some of you are terrible Are some of you completely daft? Reviews let you know specifically how good an app is. And it's so easy to read past the BS! And the more reviews for an app the more accurate it is. There's good chance a game with 50 reviews in each star is a good game but crashes or is low on content. App has 300 5 star reviews and 50 1 star, it's probably worth a buy. Youtube is horrible without the ratings. Like/dislike works for someone on Facebook saying they think their cat is cute, but not when you're consuming a product like an app or even a video. Companies would love you for reviewing products with vague feelings like "This product made me feel special." It would mean people would buy more crap. A % rating and text to go along with it is the best for saying why or why not something is good. I don't want to waste time and money figuring out what is good and what isn't. Come back soon ratings.
Canadian app store still has all the reviews on it. I'd think if they were removing them permanently - they'd remove them from all the app stores.
Reviews are gone for me (UK store). I first noticed that they had gone yesterday. It's strange that you still get reviews though.
Well it is good you found TA then where there are a bunch of various impressions about games and can guide you! I rely far more on TA users than the reviews, no matter how you filter, order, etc because too often those 500 stars you see are not by ACTUAL users but let's say "friends" that rate that only that devs games etc. So if the review section is gone, which I highly doubt it is, how am I going to remind myself if I downloaded a game before - hitting "write a review" is the best way I know of to know if I purchased (and subsequently deleted or uninstalled) a game or not!
But what if those paid customers completely abuse the system, and hurt the sales of an app with a slew of 1 star reviews just because it doesn't come with a certain feature? The average iTunes user is probably not as good at filtering useless reviews as the average Touch Arcader. Average person probably just glances at the rating, sees the 3 stars sitting there, and moves on. This is bad. Internet forums? http://forums.toucharcade.com/forumdisplay.php?f=2 LOL! Those reviews were dead on. Although the reviews are likely missing because of a glitch or update, a side of me is really hoping they're gone forever. But I've seen a lot of stupid reviews get a lot of thumbs ups. The problem is, the app store is being dominated by a bunch of young, spoiled, nitpicky, chicken nugget eating kids. I think dyscode has a good idea. Maybe they should set an age limit. You can only comment on a game if you're 21 or over.
The missing ratings/reviews issue only affects iTunes on the Mac - still available on the iPhone. So I'm quite confident it is only a temporary problem.
not just itunes on Mac. It's gone from iTunes in Windows too. A good "side effect" is App searches now display "GAME CENTER" logo next to their prices!
I hope they come back. Though I think the system is flawed and could definitely use some changes. It would be great if I could actually have a dialog with people...if someone gives me a 1 star I would love to hear why, my goal is to please the end user. If something is broken or there is something I overlooked I would love to hear about it. Simply giving a one star rating doesn't help anyone.
Nope they're still there just not showing up in iTunes. 1. when you click on an iTunes link on your pc/mac - a page that looks similar to iTunes should pop-up and that page causes iTunes to go to the page of that app. If you look on the internet page version of iTunes, you can see the reviews are still there. (although you only get see three of them) 2. If you go on your idevices and scroll down, the reviews are all still there and you can browse them and still submit your own. Apple's just probably trying to redo the way the app store looks and some glitch is causing us not to be able to see the reviews within the actual iTunes.
where I read app user reviews I read app user reviews on the recommendation sites and apps, not on iTunes! Shara
Just to add to this, I'm a developer and our app was a #1 app in a category, and has been for months. Last week a "new" developer posted a competing app, made several fake itunes accounts (around 30-50) and flooded our page with 1 star reviews. They used the same accounts to mark their app with 5 star reviews, they were featured as "new", AND they marked their 5 star reviews on their page as "Helpful" and the 1 star reviews on our page as "helpful" to bring them to the top of the list. This has caused a significant change (within 2 days) of our $ for a product that isnt superior. Buyers rely the first few reviews on the list when deciding which product to buy, and they showed how easy it was for them to (against the Apple Developer TOS) manipulate the iTunes App Store reviews and sales. I don't know of a good solution to this problem, but it has to be fixed and it looks like Apple is looking into it.
I hope this is not a glitch, but a sign that Apple have noticed the flaws in the current rating system and that they are thinking of changing it. Even though I do rely on TA for game advice, I can't help but check out game reviews anyway, just to see what the impressions are. And I am sure that there are many many out there that just use iTunes reviews. I hope good things will come out of this.
That's definitely a problem, but I really rely on app reviews before I make a purchase. Some apps might be completely broken, or aren't popular enough to warrant reviews on internet sites/forums, or have so many competitors that I have no idea which is the best without reading review comparisons. I need to have reviews back or else I can't confidently buy apps anymore... The solution to your problem could have been a type of reporting feature that causes App Store employees to look into the legitimacy of certain review accounts (who they've been reviewing, who they give 1/5 star ratings to, how long they've signed up for, etc...).
But you can't write any new ones, nor see how "helpful" they are and all that other stuff. And there are only three so are they the three best? The three latest? Three chosen? ... The question whether they are on the phone has been inconsistent as some have been able to see it, some not. On my iPod Touch they are not there. That might be a page that is still in flux as at some points of the day everyone has had something different - some could see them still in iTunes, some were gone; the phone issue; etc. The only thing safe to say is something is up and whether something is changing or not is anyone's speculation. But as many people pointed out iTunes has had very weird glitches at random times for no reason at all. Remember that whole number one app that was - uhm - Glow Stick I think for a couple days? Spiked sales in that app but everyone else was left scratching their heads!
