Game Scores a Good Predictor of Sales (for the most part)

High Scores Matter

About 18 months ago, Activision also conducted a study of 789 games made for Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 2 console and found a strong correlation between some high game scores and strong sales Activision Chief Executive Robert Kotick says the link was especially notable for games that score above 80% on Game Rankings, which grades games on a 1-to-100 percentage basis, with 100% being a perfect score. For every five percentage points above 80%, Activision found sales of a game roughly doubled. Activision believes game scores, among other factors, can actually influence sales, not just reflect their quality.

Obviously there is crap the will sell.....but do you think that game review scores are a good predictor of sales?

EDIT: Here is a quick analysis I did to try and find out the buying habits of each console owner. I used million seller games.....as those were the only games which I could really track down data easily and quickly on (I had originally planned on using the top 10 or 15 selling games for each console but to actually find a single source which would rank-order the top 15 selling games was not easy). I did this as a test to see if indeed as many people say that Wii owners are buying basically "crap" games. Sales of a Game and it's Average Score Received are being compared.

Notes: I did not include the PS3 becuase it only had two games and it's results are basically not meaningful.

Observations: If a developer were to see this what would they think? I mean I would just think "Hey....let's get as many games out there as we can"

Wii

Game Sales Gamerankings Avg Score

Wii Sports 10.62 76

Wii Play 6.24 60

Zelda: TP 3.78 94

Mario Party 8 2.48 64

Wario Ware 1.88 82

Paper Mario 1.56 85

Rayman RR 1.03 77

Red Steel 1.02 65

Mean 75.375

Std. Deviation 11.71003843

Correlation Coefficient -0.104393427

(Interpretation: Basically says the two are negatively related and as the score on a Wii game goes up it's sales go down slightly :shock: You would expect this to actually be the opposite)

Xbox 360

Game Sales Gamerankings Avg Score

Gears 4.81 94

Halo 3 4.64 93

Oblivion 2.14 94

CoD2 1.99 90

GRAW 1 1.98 90

RB 6 1.95 89

CoD3 1.83 83

Madden 07 1.73 81

GH II 1.65 92

FNR 3 1.52 85

Saints Row 1.48 82

Lost Planet 1.44 80

Dead Rising 1.41 85

GRAW 2 1.16 86

Bioshock 1.31 96

Crackdown 1.27 83

PGR 3 1.26 88

PD: 0 1.23 81

Madden 08 1.23 83

NFS: Most Wanted 1.12 83

NFS: Carbon 1.07 78

Forza 2 1.06 90

Pro Evo Soccer 6 1.02 79

SC: Double Agent 1.02 85

Mean 86.25

Std. Deviation 5.219112035

Correlation Coefficient 0.540354278

(Interpretation: That there is a moderate correlation between Xbox 360 game-scores and sales. As a game's score goes up you would expect the sales to go up also. This would suggest that Xbox 360 games are buying better games than Wii owners are......thus kind of giving some weight to the whole "Wii owners buy crap games...and devs can just push crap on them..blah...blah..." theory

Obviously there is crap the will sell.....but do you think that game review scores are a good predictor of sales?MikeE21286

Good Games = Good Sales, so much so that the mods of SW tried to make games the criteria on what wins system wars, at least they tried until people realized that the PC would then never lose system wars, and put a stop to that.

No, not even remotely.goblaa

No, not even remotely.goblaa

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119024844874433247-EnpxM1F6fI9YZDofC7VnyPzVrGQ_20070920.html?mod=todays_free_feature

About 18 months ago, Activision also conducted a study of 789 games made for Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 2 console and found a strong correlation between some high game scores and strong sales Activision Chief Executive Robert Kotick says the link was especially notable for games that score above 80% on Game Rankings, which grades games on a 1-to-100 percentage basis, with 100% being a perfect score. For every five percentage points above 80%, Activision found sales of a game roughly doubled. Activision believes game scores, among other factors, can actually influence sales, not just reflect their quality.

[QUOTE="goblaa"]No, not even remotely.Ibacai

I was about to use that exact same example, that really does get on my nerves, that game was so awesome.

[QUOTE="Ibacai"][QUOTE="goblaa"]No, not even remotely.lantus

I was about to use that exact same example, that really does get on my nerves, that game was so awesome.

The point is whether or not there's a trend. Of course you can bring up single examples that don't fit. That's not the idea.

i think the review scores are driving bioshocks sales. a game like this should not sell, yet it does :shock: advertising probably helped too.

it doesn't work for all games, but i beleive bioshock is getting lots of "word of mouth" purchases.

No, there are far too many examples of the contrary to set is a norm.

Grim Fandango was GOTY 1998, and it was a commercial failure.

No, there are far too many examples of the contrary to set is a norm.

Grim Fandango was GOTY 1998, and it was a commercial failure.

Panzer_Zwei

Well, that was a PC adventure game. They didn't tend to make much money at that point. Half-Life came out the same year, got great reviews and GOTY awards, and was a huge seller.

[QUOTE="lantus"]

[QUOTE="Ibacai"][QUOTE="goblaa"]No, not even remotely.Zeliard9

I was about to use that exact same example, that really does get on my nerves, that game was so awesome.

The point is whether or not there's a trend. Of course you can bring up single examples that don't fit. That's not the idea.

[QUOTE="Panzer_Zwei"]

No, there are far too many examples of the contrary to set is a norm.

Grim Fandango was GOTY 1998, and it was a commercial failure.

Zeliard9

Well, that was a PC adventure game. They didn't tend to make much money at that point.

There are genres which are just not popular enough, despite if they bring an excellent game that gets praised all over, it doesn't guarantee good sales. There are countless examples.

Also there are games that will just sell, regardless of the score.

[QUOTE="Zeliard9"][QUOTE="lantus"]

[QUOTE="Ibacai"][QUOTE="goblaa"]No, not even remotely.Ibacai

I was about to use that exact same example, that really does get on my nerves, that game was so awesome.

The point is whether or not there's a trend. Of course you can bring up single examples that don't fit. That's not the idea.

I never said other variables couldn't be involved. That's obvious, the main ones being the genre of the game and what system(s) it's on. But go peruse Gamerankings, look at their top 100 or so highest-rankings games. Most of them sold well, some extremely well. I do think there's a correlation.

I partially agree that the score can effect sales (I don't get why everyone seems to think that it won't) but you can't compare those two lineups, thare are way too many differences in the products. First off you're comparing the Wii games that came out in the systems first 11 months with games that came out for the 360 23 months ago. The Wii has had a relatively poor flow of games over its lifespan thus far, meaning people are more likely to buy low quality games. Also you don't take into account the core differences of the two consoles. Games like Wii Sports are going to sell on the Wii because its one of the few games to make good use of motion sensing. If Wii Sports were a 360 game it would have scored a3 or 4(maybe) and would have barely sold.

Also the 360 has a huge marketing advantage. MS markets the games over the hardware while Nintendo does things the other way. Plus XBL gives the 360 another huge advantage with demos and game trailers. Of the 360's 6 new IPs on that list (Bioshock, Saint's Row, Crackdown, Dead Rising, Lost Planet and Gears) all except Gears (which was fueled by huge hype) had excellent demos. On the other hand Wii games cannot take advantage of demos and only Metroid has had any form of trailer (and my understanding is that it has sold reasonably well). MS does a very good job of marketing its games, Nintendo doesn't. Finally Wii Play and Wii Sports shouldn't count, as those numbers count the free versions of Wii Sports that came with North American Wiis (not sure about Europe)and Wii Play comes with a controller, making it a much more attractive buy at $59. I know the EB I go to has been pushing Wii Play purely as a controller with "an extra game for $15".

Now while there is definitely some truth to your points, I feel it would have been more prudent to compare the PS3 to the Wii,due to both having a similar game catelogue(in terms of quality)and both having been available for the same period of time. Score is definitely going to affect game sales, unlike some people here seem to think so called casual gamers are still going to try and find good value for their $60. The problem is the Wii and 360 are so different in virtually every way that to compare them is almost meaningless. At least with the PS3 there are some similarities.

I partially agree that the score can effect sales (I don't get why everyone seems to think that it won't) but you can't compare those two lineups, thare are way too many differences in the products. First off you're comparing the Wii games that came out in the systems first 11 months with games that came out for the 360 23 months ago. The Wii has had a relatively poor flow of games over its lifespan thus far, meaning people are more likely to buy low quality games. Also you don't take into account the core differences of the two consoles. Games like Wii Sports are going to sell on the Wii because its one of the few games to make good use of motion sensing. If Wii Sports were a 360 game it would have scored a3 or 4(maybe) and would have barely sold.

Also the 360 has a huge marketing advantage. MS markets the games over the hardware while Nintendo does things the other way. Plus XBL gives the 360 another huge advantage with demos and game trailers. Of the 360's 6 new IPs on that list (Bioshock, Saint's Row, Crackdown, Dead Rising, Lost Planet and Gears) all except Gears (which was fueled by huge hype) had excellent demos. On the other hand Wii games cannot take advantage of demos and only Metroid has had any form of trailer (and my understanding is that it has sold reasonably well). MS does a very good job of marketing its games, Nintendo doesn't. Finally Wii Play and Wii Sports shouldn't count, as those numbers count the free versions of Wii Sports that came with North American Wiis (not sure about Europe)and Wii Play comes with a controller, making it a much more attractive buy at $59. I know the EB I go to has been pushing Wii Play purely as a controller with "an extra game for $15".

Now while there is definitely some truth to your points, I feel it would have been more prudent to compare the PS3 to the Wii,due to both having a similar game catelogue(in terms of quality)and both having been available for the same period of time. Score is definitely going to affect game sales, unlike some people here seem to think so called casual gamers are still going to try and find good value for their $60. The problem is the Wii and 360 are so different in virtually every way that to compare them is almost meaningless. At least with the PS3 there are some similarities.

PBSnipes

OH yeah, by no means is this even a "study" done by myself....just some quick and dirty numbers with readily available data. There are inherent holes in the data, but I'm pretty sure that had I had all of the games for the Wii and all of the games for the 360 (or Ps3) the numbers would end up to where the Wii owners are the "worst" of the consumers. I was just tryign to see if that argument held up. I didn't use PS3 numbers because there were only 2 million selling games (RfoM and Motorstorm) so the anaylsis was hardly useful.

I can see that MS is pushing the software and has very good marketing and what not, but doesn't that still mean bad things though. I mean if these games are gonna be what is marketed by Nintendo (obviously there demographic is different than 360s marketing demographic) and this is the kind of sales we're going to get from some admittedly bad titles (even for the games in that fit that demographic) then Wii owners could be in for a long generation.

[QUOTE="Zeliard9"][QUOTE="lantus"]

[QUOTE="Ibacai"][QUOTE="goblaa"]No, not even remotely.Ibacai

I was about to use that exact same example, that really does get on my nerves, that game was so awesome.

The point is whether or not there's a trend. Of course you can bring up single examples that don't fit. That's not the idea.

It's not a perfect predictor, nothing ever is (I have never seen anything with a correlation of 1, which would mean the independent variable is the only thing to account for changes in the dependent variable) but it can be used to explain sales. And you have admit the presence of outliers, like you have shown

[QUOTE="Zeliard9"][QUOTE="lantus"]

[QUOTE="Ibacai"][QUOTE="goblaa"]No, not even remotely.Ibacai

I was about to use that exact same example, that really does get on my nerves, that game was so awesome.

The point is whether or not there's a trend. Of course you can bring up single examples that don't fit. That's not the idea.

Yes, there are some exceptions, but it follows the rule most of the time.

[QUOTE="goblaa"]No, not even remotely.Ibacai