Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR), the same interactive entertainment research firm that recently reported that online games generate about twice the revenue of offline titles, has released new data from its study Console Intelligence Brief 2007, which shows that a game's rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) could have a larger impact on its market performance than we might think.

EEDAR examined 219 retail and 187 downloadable games made available for the three new platforms (Xbox 360, Wii and PS3) since their respective launches through June 1, 2007, and found that Mature rated titles have both the highest average Metacritic scores and the highest average gross sales in the U.S. despite the fact that these titles only comprised about ten percent of all U.S. retail games examined.

Interestingly, EEDAR's study would seem to suggest that reviews in the enthusiast press do indeed matter, especially if the reviews are overwhelmingly positive. Games that garnered a Metacritic score above 90 grossed sales up to 531 percent more than the industry average, EEDAR discovered. That said, such high profile games are few and far between � fewer than two percent of all titles released fit into this category. 2K's BioShock would be the most recent example; the game earned an impressive 96 so it'll be interesting to see how the sales numbers stack up.

Bioshock also falls into the genre that EEDAR found generally has the highest gross sales: the Shooter. Overall, though, the study found that the most prevalent genre on the market of all available titles is the Action genre at 24 percent.

Another finding worth mentioning considering the tremendous success Nintendo has had so far with the Wii console is that more than twice the number of retail and downloadable game titles have been released on Wii than either the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 during the first 7 months of each platform's launch.

[UPDATE] When contacted for comment an ESA representative could not give us an official statement but simply pointed out that most top selling video games are not rated M. For example, looking at the chart of the best selling titles of 2006, you can see that only one game out of the top ten is rated M, Gears of War.

[UPDATE 2] GameDaily BIZ contacted Geoffrey Zatkin, President, COO and Co-Founder of Electronic Entertainment Design and Research who clarified that "the Everyone and Teen ESRB rating categories both have higher total revenues � however, these ESRB ratings also have significantly higher quantities of game titles." He said that only 16% of all PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 retail game titles have a Mature rating, but "the average Mature game title brings in more revenue than the average game with any other ESRB rating." Interestingly, Zatkin pointed out that "Mature games on the Wii have lower average revenues than the Everyone, Everyone 10+ and Teen ESRB rated game titles."

Zatkin believes there are a few reasons why Mature games generate big bucks. One is simply that gamers have grown up. "Gamers have gotten older; Microsoft reports that the average gamer is 29 years old. It's not surprising that an older demographic would buy games with a higher ESRB rating. The same can be seen with movies; you would expect a 29-year-old to see more R than PG rated movies," he said.

Zatkin also thinks that M-rated titles automatically come with higher expectations. "Games are entertainment. Look at the genres that have mature titles. Action. Fighting. Shooter. We have been raised on a glorious tradition of Hollywood action movies where the protagonists, antagonists and supporting characters swear, bleed and generally have fantastic looking bodies (which jiggle and bulge in all the right places). Why wouldn't consumers respond more favorably to games that replicate this experience?"

He continued, "It sells because it has a mature rating. The ESRB rating and ESRB content descriptors set an expectation. I have friends that didn't go see Live Free, Die Hard because it wasn't rated R. Say you're going to go see an action movie this weekend. The only things you know about your two movie choices are that one is rated R and the other PG. Which one will you go see? Probably the one with the R rating; the R rating gives you an expectation of what you will see in the movie based on what you have seen in other R rated action movies. This means that if Mature rated games in a genre do well (for example, Halo and Gears of War in the shooter genre) you will expect other Mature rated games in the same genre to deliver a similar experience."