Highest sales = highest quality; reviews are useless

Reviews are a large part of your dollar amount because reviews help games sell.wooooode

Edit. Sales only make the most sense on what determines the greatest quality of a game. Quality/value. Reviews are the way everyone looks at how good the game is. This isn't going to change. If it did then we'd be more free. The TC is fighting an uphill battle. And the hill is a wall.

The consumer buys and then plays. The reviewers play before we buy. That is why sales =/= quality.

That's terribly wrong. Marketing also plays a big role in sales rather than overall game quality. Iron Man sold more copies than at Vanquish at launch and I think we can all agree on which game is better..

Your entire thread can simply be debunked with this small sentence:

Popularity =/= Quality

Quality, overall, contains many elements that defines it, popularity is a part, i believe, but does not define quality in a absolute way. It depends on a hella lot more things than that. Plus subjective taste get's in the way, always.

So no.

Just because reviews aren't perfect doesn't mean you should resort to something even less reliable to determine quality.

hakanakumono

Basicly this. Sales should never determine quality.

Don't forget that the big mass market is very uninformed and easily manipulated.

So good marketing = good quality?

I look at it this way; if I'm selling an amazing gem but don't market it very well, barely anyone will know about it, thus barely anyone will buy it. I'd have to rely on word of mouth. Now if I grabbed a piece of trash, through on some glossy paint, had Activision through a few million (maybe more?) at it for advertisement & proper marketing, It's going to sell.

Now grab something with a decent idea. A new 'family-esque' party designed games with 'new' controls that don't require a controller entrenched in the mainstream as the nerds weapon of choice, removing that stereotype & making it more accessible to mainstream audiences, the largest demographic capable of bringing in a lot of sales, as well as the well planned, massively budgeted marketing campaign, & you have yourself a gold mine.... Doesn't mean it's a quality product.

Don't forget that the big mass market is very uninformed and easily manipulated.

JLF1

At the end of the day though all the mass maekwt wants are entertaining games, being manipulated is just good business on the companies part.

And yet Shadow of the colossus is very rarely known about...

Oh yes, and I hope you realsie that, in order for people to find out what quality a game is,a nd whether it was worth it for them, they would have to have bought the game in the first place. Sales just means someone has found out about the game and think it looks interesting. Majorly.

[QUOTE="wooooode"]Reviews are a large part of your dollar amount because reviews help games sell.LOXO7

Edit. Sales only make the most sense on what determines the greatest quality of a game. Quality/value. Reviews are the way everyone looks at how good the game is. This isn't going to change. If it did then we'd be more free. The TC is fighting an uphill battle. And the hill is a wall.

I would have never bought Baten Kaitos or its prequel if I went by sales. Reviews...well they were good enough although highly underrapreciated!

[QUOTE="CaseyWegner"]you're making too many assumptions. there is absolutely no way to track somebody's enjoyment of a game but that works both ways. somebody can hate a game, think a game is okay, think a game is good, think a game is great, or think a game is the best they've ever played but all of these opinions count the same because all you are looking at is the fact that they bought the game. it's silly.you're assuming that somebody buys something because it is quality and doesn't buy something because it isn't quality. they don't know until after they buy it though. somebody buys something because they hope they will like it. the word "disappointment" exists for a reason.Mrmccormo

When a game has very low sales, we can conclusively prove that it didn't meet the mass market's definition of a quality product in one way or another. However, when a game has very high sales, can you conclusively prove that a lot of those customers were unsatisfied? I'm curious to see how you could prove that, because that seems to be the crux of your argument.

i'm not assuming anything. i'm pointing out exceptions where for you a sale = absolute measure of quality. i am not saying that there's a large portion of people who don't like the game. what are you saying though? there's a large portion of people who like the game? care to prove that? you're also ignoring all the other factors that influence game sales. why?

Random wii shovelware Mini games > crysis, halo, rdr, sc2, demons souls, uc2, etc Britney spears > portishead, stone sour, steve via, James newton Howard, Bach, etc Avatar > there will be blood, no country for old men, legends of the fall, unbreakable, seven pounds, etclespaul1919

TO be fair, No Country For Old Men sucked :P.

i'm not assuming anything. i'm pointing out exceptions where for you a sale = absolute measure of quality. i am not saying that there's a large portion of people who don't like the game. what are you saying though? there's a large portion of people who like the game? care to prove that? you're also ignoring all the other factors that influence game sales. why?CaseyWegner

Wow. A lot to comment on so I'll just do bullets.

1) I don't think gamers allow anyone to tell them what they should like or not. If they did then why would SW, arguably a place where people who KNOW about games come to fight, constantly be defending games that score 8s or even 7s sometimes?

2) I disagree completely that sales equal quality because some lesser quality games sell TONS and some extremely high quality games bomb in the sales but are kept alive thanks to an almost cult-like following. For example, the very first TOny Hawk game was mediocre at best, but it sold because it was original and a hell of a lot of fun. Then later on when the series was plummeting downhill, it still sold a lot thanks to brand name recognition and nostalgia. But games like Ico, Shadow of the Colossus,Beyond Good and Evil, and probably countless others that people can mention, sell very low numbers and yet are critically acclaimed and very much loved by those who DO play them.

3) Meanwhile, if sales = quality, then for the most part how does that really differ from what we see every day? Top selling, big name franchises sell a ton AND typically get great scores. Halo, Gears, Killzone, UNcharted, Assasin's Creed, Mario, Pokemon, etc. So if you look at some of the biggest selling AND top scoring games, they are one and the same. So why would you think that for the most part, people are ignoring sales in favour of scores? For the most part they are the same.

4)Meanwhile, the entire arguement you quote above seems to ignore a NUMBER of reasons a game will get a low score but still sell well. Mario Kart Wii got "only" and 8 because it isn't a new game with new levels or new graphics. It was just a remaking of past Mario Karts with motor bikes and motion control thrown in. The graphics and tracks are all re-used from previous games. So the score has to be lower to reflect that because, in general, the people who follow scores are the people who have likely bought past Mario Kart games already.

5) The article seems to confuse "quality" with "appeal". Mario Kart having more quality is highly up for debate because there are a number of verifiable factors that affect quality. COntrol, graphics, sounds, level design, story, etc. There are many ways to judge the quality of one game over another. However, not everyone cares about the same level of quality. What I consider good or bad "quality" is going to differ from what some soccer mom or 10 year old thinks is "quality". HOwever, appeal is a completely different matter. A game can have a lower quality (ie. no story, mediocre graphics, muddy controls, etc) and still have broad appeal because it is simple and fun and easy for a lot of people to pick up and play either alone or with their friends/family.

6) On appeal vs. quality. Appealmeasures how popular a game is or will be. This can be measured by sales success. Quality refers to how well something has been MADE. While review scores are still subjective, they more accurately reflect how well a game is made than sales. While quality and appeal can over lap many times, they are not always directly connected. They are both subjective and a sliding scale, but they ARE still two very different things.

7) My biggest problem with the quote is the mistaken belief that reviews are nothing BUT the score. Frankly, I get so sick of hearing this that it gets me angry when I hear it now. The score is a subjective reflection of the WORDS that make up a review. If people aren't smart enough to read the actual review - the REASONING behing why they scored a game a certain way - then that is their own ignorance. But the fact is reading the review provides the best indication of whether or not YOU will like a game regardless of the score it gets. Some of my favorite games of all time were originally only 8 scoring games. Meanwhile, some games that score in the 9s bug the heck out of me because some small issues that don't bother the reviewer, or other people, will ruin/break a game for me. For example, a camera that needs constant babysitting will ruin ANY game for me even though that may be a small issue for many.So focusing only on scores is faulty logic. Debate the reviews if you have a problem with them...not just the score. In fact, that is why sites like metacritic or gamerankings exist, in theory. TO gather all the scores and come up with an average because different issues will affect different gamers. BUt if a game consistently receives high scores, it is probably a good indicator it is a high quality game that will appeal to the most people.

Wii sports is fun for like 5 minutes.

I care little about the sales because my tastes differ a lot from the overall crowd. I don't really care about CoD, Madden or Fifa. I despise wii fit, just dance and all that crap.

If I only let GS reviews decide which games I played, I would have never played Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Nier, SMT: Strange Journey, and Rune Factory: Frontier. That would have been my loss, because I think those games are great, I'm glad I didn't let the reviews (or lack their of) affect my decision to buy them.

On the other hand, I did listen to reviews for games like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry 2, Resident Evil 5, and No More Heroes thinking they would be great games, but I was utterly disappointed in them.

I was 100% sure that this thread was going to be GT5 vs Forza.

I am dissapoint.

Spock judges you, this thread is illogical.

Why do we gamers allow game developers and "journalists" determine what games are quality and what ones aren't? People vote with their dollar. We can argue about aesthetics or content all day long, but at the end of the day, the quality of a game is decided by sales.

Disagree? Wanna argue about definitions or how video games are art? Argue all you want, but you're going to be going up against some of the most respected businessmen out there. Armand V Feigenbaum has said in his book Total Quality Control that "quality is a customer determination", and it's not up to the designers, the marketers, or the reviewers/journalists to determine what is and what is not quality. David A Garvin states that "the quality of a product is determined by the consumer and is in "the eye of the beholder"."

Even after reading the thread title, you must be laughing to yourself and thinking "Wait, so are you saying that Mario Kart on the Wii is a higher-quality game than Mass Effect 2 because it sold more?"But this adds nothing to our discussion. Wait, so are YOU saying that Mass Effect 2 is a higher-quality game than Mario Kart Wii because it has cutscenes, more dialog, and guns? This all boils down to opinion, and ultimately, consumers voted with their money. Mario Kart offers more quality and value to more people than Mass Effect does. This doesn't mean ME2 is a bad game or even that Mario Kart Wii will always be the "better game" on an individual basis. Plenty of people are going to enjoy Mass Effect 2 more than Mario Kart. It does mean - however - that to the public, Mario Kart Wii has more quality, and based on sales, more people are enjoying Mario Kart Wii. It's really quite simple. But we gamers don't like this logic.

I think this is why gamers huddle around review scores so often, even though we're being completely illogicalabout it. If someone like me says "high sales equals high quality", isnt' the counter-argument going to be "popularity doesn't determine quality"?

Wait, so then why do we use the opinion of someone else (a reviewer) and combine all those scores together into an average (on Metacritic, for example) and then use THAT as some sort of gauge of quality? Isn't that the exact same kind of popular vote, except that the reviewers are only awarding meaningless numbers, whereas the market is actually giving a popular vote with their money? Doesn't it make MORE sense to find out for yourself what games are good instead of relying on the "popular vote" of a small collection of videogame reviewers? These days, a game gets anywhere from 30 to 50 "professional" reviews that are added to sites like Metacritic. However, when a game like Mario Kart sells 26 million, here you have a case of 26 million people who voted "yes" with real money against 30-50 reviewers who may or may not have voted "yes" with their review scores. BTW, Mario Kart Wii has a Metacritic score of 82 and therefore has a lower score than dozens of current-gen titles. It's sales - however - have made it one of the best-selling stand-alone titles in the history of videogames.

Our opinions on reviews really make no sense. Now, if you happen to trust a particular reviewer (like, if his/her game preferences line up with yours), then that's fine. However, then it's no different than hearing a game suggestion from a trusted friend. It has nothing to do with the reviewer's status as a reviewer.

If there is anything I'd change about this gaming generation, it would be the blind trust in reviewers.

Mrmccormo

TL;DR but if you're claiming that "sales = quality" I couldn't disagree more.

Red Steel Better than Killer 7 or No more heroes MWAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

that is all

Red Steel Better than Killer 7 or No more heroes MWAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

that is all

ps2snesgod

Here is the problem with your arguement...I personally disliked Killer 7 and NMH as much as I disliked Red Steel. So based on that, the review scores for Killer 7 and NMH were "useless".

You need actual evidence to make a logical arguement. You can't just make some lame observation and act like that proves something.

[QUOTE="ps2snesgod"]

Red Steel Better than Killer 7 or No more heroes MWAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

that is all

ZIMdoom

Here is the problem with your arguement...I personally disliked Killer 7 and NMH as much as I disliked Red Steel. So based on that, the review scores for Killer 7 and NMH were "useless".

You need actual evidence to make a logical arguement. You can't just make some lame observation and act like that proves something.

Highest sales = highest marketing budget, which, oddly enough, usually means less money dedicated to the game, making the game worse.

Why do we gamers allow game developers and "journalists" determine what games are quality and what ones aren't? People vote with their dollar. We can argue about aesthetics or content all day long, but at the end of the day, the quality of a game is decided by sales.

Mrmccormo

If this were entirely true - which it isn't - then we wouldn't have Readers' Choice categories such as "Worst game everyone played" and "Best game no one played".

Gamer hype =/= critical eye of an established reviewer. Note this: Gamespot reviewers run every game to the credits before penning a review - this includes MP if the game has it.

[QUOTE="oldkingallant"][QUOTE="KBFloYd"]

if something sells better then it means that more people think its better than the game you like..

the perfect game? are you serious?

wii sports didnt have a major marketing campaign... the wii would like to play commercial was it..

point is...a game's quality is a subjective matter...someone could spend 5million on a game and some guy invents tetris which sell millions... tetris is the better game that everyone voted with their wallets.

KBFloYd

ok let me reverse your point.

if one game is advertised more than the other but the one that wasn't advertised as much ends up selling more..then you would say the quality is better than the one with more advertising?

yes you voted with your wallet on the conduit.. you thought.. hey..this gameis going to deliver a hardcore experience on the wii and i like that... anyway..the conduit is a bad example because it didnt sell...so nobody liked it.

just because a group of people on the internet think a game is better doesnt mean the whole world does... the proof is in the sales on what people want..
if the whole world thought urine tatsed better than pepsi but i didnt... then to me its not true but the majority would be right...doesnt mean you have to agree...JUST ACCEPT IT.

And a beverage is vastly different from a video game. If people liked urine better than Pepsi in general, in the public's eye it'd be the better tasting drink. The difference is a drink is something you buy constantly, I've had a good 200 Pepsis in the last year, but when I buy a game I buy it once. Repeated purchase of a drink insures that the consumer enjoys the product, but there's no guarantee someone will enjoy a game they buy.

Wii sports is fun for like 5 minutes.

Gue1

[QUOTE="ps2snesgod"]

Red Steel Better than Killer 7 or No more heroes MWAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

that is all

ZIMdoom

Here is the problem with your arguement...I personally disliked Killer 7 and NMH as much as I disliked Red Steel. So based on that, the review scores for Killer 7 and NMH were "useless".

You need actual evidence to make a logical arguement. You can't just make some lame observation and act like that proves something.

I'm pretty sure no one's gonna answer this, but what if I wanted the game with more dialogue? Then are reviewers right?Blabadon

It's different for a lot of the people here, because they're more of a niche market. For most of the people here, gaming is a decently big hobby, so they will most likely have different likes than casual gamers. At lest that's the way I see it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that games with a large amount of sales are typically marketed towards a different set of people than people here.

If I only let GS reviews decide which games I played, I would have never played Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Nier, SMT: Strange Journey, and Rune Factory: Frontier. That would have been my loss, because I think those games are great, I'm glad I didn't let the reviews (or lack their of) affect my decision to buy them.

On the other hand, I did listen to reviews for games like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry 2, Resident Evil 5, and No More Heroes thinking they would be great games, but I was utterly disappointed in them.

Bigboi500

The best way to get an idea how good a game is for you is basically to read a lot of reviews from a person with the same ideas and mindset as you regarding games. Listening to podcasts like The Hotspot or The Bombcast are also a good way to get a much better idea of why a person liked or disliked a game.

I would personally rather trust a review from Kevin VanOrd than one from Chris Watters simply because I tend to enjoy games that Kevin likes a lot more. We seem to want the same from games. I also tend to agree with Tom McShea's reviews. This doesn't mean that I don't trust a review from Watters, it just means that what he likes and dislikes are different from my ideas. Thus I can more easily know if a game is for me or not. If he gives a game 6.0 it might still be for me. If VanOrd or McShea gives a game a 6.0 I usually stay away.

This is why I like reviews that tells me what the reviewer did or didn't like. That way I can easily know if the complains would bother me or not. Outdated gameplay in JRPGs or adventure game are fine by me. Bad controls on the other hand is a big no no.

Sales doesn't mean quality. Look at Wii play. Boring, dull, can hardly be called a game, but it sold a ton. (Yes I know because of the bundled Wiimote.) And there are many great games that don't get the attention they deserve. Here's a few.

Knights in the Nightmare

Final Fantasy CC: The Crystal Bearers

Thief Deadly Shadows

Game sales don't equal quality.

To the number of games sold is a better indicator than a review of how someone liked it?SoraX64

Apparently.

[QUOTE="Vesica_Prime"]

So Wii Sports is clearly the best game ever?

Mrmccormo

You're looking at it as if sales are solely determined by the quality of game. Newsflash: they aren't. Sales are based on a number of factors(i.e. brand name, word of mouth, advertising, etc). 20 million soccer moms could buy a Batman game for their 3 bajillion children just because "Batman" is on the box.

You're also implying everybody who bought the game liked it, and that said sales are the number of people actually playing the game rather than the amount the company shipped to retailers.

Reviews and Sales are two things I pay no attention to.

Sometiems I like to read some reviews, but I dont let them tell me if a game is good or not, ever. Its nice to see games I like get good reviews soemtiems, but its not something I pay alot of attention to.

Try the game yourself when it comes out and make your opinion.

ico, horrible game, am I right?

This is plain wrong, for one reason.

And that reason is that quality is not a major contributing factor to sales.

The contributing factors to sales are MARKETING, MASS APPEAL, and RATING (RATINGS RATINGS RATINGS)

With the majority of Wii owners being younger families and children, E rated games such as Mario will sell much more than games like Mass Effect. Also, a game like Demon's Souls had almost zero marketing, but MKW had a TON of it. Saying that MKW is better than DS is pretty naive.

[QUOTE="Mrmccormo"][QUOTE="Vesica_Prime"]

So Wii Sports is clearly the best game ever?

Upparoom

You're looking at it as if sales are solely determined by the quality of game. Newsflash: they aren't. Sales are based on a number of factors(i.e. brand name, word of mouth, advertising, etc). 20 million soccer moms could buy a Batman game for their 3 bajillion children just because "Batman" is on the box.

You're also implying everybody who bought the game liked it, and that said sales are the number of people actually playing the game rather than the amount the company shipped to retailers.