Previously, I have taken a look at the Top Ten Xbox 360 Bombs and the Top Ten Wii Bombs, using a scoring system I developed that takes into account both the review scores and the percentage of the install base of a console that bought a particular game. The approach is designed to explore "critical darlings, commercial bombs", a phenomenon that has been witnessed many times in the history of video games. Now: the PS3's turn.

The AURA (Achieved Under Review Aggregate) scoring system is still kind of a work in progress, so any input (especially from those handy in math), is always appreciated. For a full explanation of the system, hit the Wii bombs article for plenty of discussion. That said, I am happy with its current incarnation and using it with gamerankings.com and vgchartz.com data, I now present the Top Ten PS3 Bomb in North America. The 83 PS3 games that had a gamerankings.com score of 80 above were studied.

you'll find that I stated that once you get pass .50, you are getting into "bomb" territory. Looking at this list, you can see that even the worst performing games by review score are doing kind of decent. There are some similarities in the lists, as one would expect with so many multi-platform titles appearing on both consoles, but I will save discussion of that for my round up article.

Interestingly, there are three Japanese developed RPGs on this list, two of which are "tactical RPGs". Eternal Sonata was a complete bomb, while faring better in reviews than the Xbox version. That stated, Eternal Sonata for the PS3 was released a full year after the Xbox 360 version.

Another "timed exclusive" made the list, with BioShock scoring a .45. This was released well after the Xbox 360 version, which did fantastic on that console (.13). Does this mean that there are plenty of people who own both consoles and opted for the earlier release? Or is it a case of a game losing its release hype? Either way it shows the importance of a timed exclusive.

Two racing games made the list, Dirt and Pure, but these are niche titles (in a niche genre), both of which compete directly with PS3 exclusive and flagship racing title (until Gran Turismo 5 appears), MotorStorm.

As with Xbox 360, the new Riddick game has tanked, showing that there is no real audience for the franchise anywhere.

One interesting thing about this list is the near absence of sports titles. While they are not burning up the charts on the PS3, we are witnessing better performance overall by sports titles.

Next up, I will compare the bombs across all the consoles.