iTunes Store now shows Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer reviews for movies

Apple has quietly added Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer ratings and reviews for movies in the iTunes Store. Rotten Tomatoes is one of the most popular movie review sites on the web. It uses reviews from top critics and film societies to produce Tomatometer ratings -- a percentage-based rating of a movie derived from the averages of all the reviews of the film.

iTunes' integrated Rotten Tomatoes ratings presents the movie's prospective buyers and renters with the Tomatometer chart featuring the total count of reviews along with a fresh/rotten breakdown and the average rating. Viewers are also shown four review snippets from Top Critic reviewers, followed by a link to the movies page on RottenTomatoes.com.

Thanks to reader Eric Zigler who sent this in.

View Tags

Categories

iTS

Apple has quietly added Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer ratings and reviews for movies in the iTunes Store. Rotten Tomatoes is one of the...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

8 Comments

Filter by:

JayZ

I am always curious why so many tag lines read "Apple quietly updated..." blah blah blah... Is there a way to noisily update something? Maybe a parade and fireworks?

I'm quietly waiting for the iLife update...

May 20 2010 at 3:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

numpty

Pity, I always found Metacritic's reviews to be more in line with my own :/

May 20 2010 at 12:34 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to numpty's comment

tzohar

You make it sound like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes write their own reviews... Both websites collect reviews from other sources and tally them all up, so you agreeing with one of them more than the other can only be coincidence.

May 20 2010 at 12:45 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Wry Cooter

Also Grant, some people seek out the terrible, for humorous schadenfreude and other reasons. But I think sometimes the Tomatometer allows for "so bad its good" to still keep an overall positive rating.

May 20 2010 at 11:52 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Grant Buell

I like this, but it seems like a very strange move because it might make it harder for Apple to sell some movies. For example, The Tooth Fairy has 3.5 stars in iTunes from user ratings, but it has a Tomatometer rating of 14%

May 20 2010 at 10:38 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to Grant Buell's comment

Brett

That depends on how you look at it; people may be more willing to purchase movies if they have more trust that they'll enjoy it.

May 20 2010 at 10:46 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Quinn Taylor

Inconsistencies like that may throw some people off. On the other hand, it may indicate something about differences between the groups who rate movies on iTunes and Rotten Tomatoes. I see it as potentially very helpful, particularly for old movies I'm not familiar with. And when all is said and done, most of the time you can rent rather than buy...

May 20 2010 at 11:58 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Blaktornado

Nice to see Apple embracing a third party service like this. Apart from the bare minimum (such as Facebook and Flickr in iPhoto), Apple seems to be quite hesitant about integrating third party services, opting to try and provide their own lackluster attempt to fill in the gaps instead. Especially in iTunes. Good. Hopefully we'll see more stuff like this in the future.

May 20 2010 at 10:22 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply