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Forums - Sales Discussion - Why do people think a game that sold more is automatically better?

LivingMetal on 15 February 2011

And here's something else. Before the interwebs exploded, did gamers NOT enjoyed playing games because they did NOT have easy access to sales figures?  Did gamers once go around saying, "I just bought this game, and I don't know if I'm going to enjoy it.  I don't know how many copies this game sold."  Or, "I enjoyed playing this game when it sold 1.2 million copies a while back.  Now, it's sold 2.7 copies.  Because of that, I now remembered enjoying that same game over twice as much."  Or how about, "Now, that I found out that the game you played sold more than the game I played, the game I played just isn't as good as when I played it anymore."  I detect that there is something inherently wrong with the person the OP is in reference to amongst others.



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LivingMetal on 15 February 2011
youarebadatgames said:

Sales are the only thing that matters to companies and quality is entirely subjective, however sales is a good reflection of what a large population thinks about a game...


Stop right there.  The majority isn't always right.



youarebadatgames on 15 February 2011
Edgeoflife said:
youarebadatgames said:

Sales are the only thing that matters to companies and quality is entirely subjective, however sales is a good reflection of what a large population thinks about a game.

What a large population thinks > what a small subgroup thinks, both in $$$ and weight of opinion.  The large selling games are giving the majority of people what they want, and is rightly the focus of game developers.  To the majority, high selling games are quality.

Your tastes aren't any better than theirs, and if you think the game is trash why are so many copies being sold?  Even if there are minor imperfections, it's not enough to stop people from buying them, so it obviously isn't as bad as you think.  For all the bitching people do about BLOPs, they're still buying it and enjoying it.

So keep hating on COD, Just Dance, and other popular things.  To me that just sounds like the whining of a bitch that wants people to like what he likes, but gets angry when people don't.

I never called any of the games trash and you are wrong about the sales are what matters to companies, it's the revenue that matters, it doesn't matter if a game sold 10 million if they didn't make a profit it on, if the devs costs where high and they spent a fortune on advertising even an incredibly high selling game can be a financial failure,  and you say majority opinion trumps minority but what you don't realize is that it's not their opinion that the game is better, they might just not know about the other game or not played it, games without much advertising can easily go under the radar so really you don't have any valid points


Sales are directly related to revenue, so yes they do matter.  Companies will advertise according to what they project, so high selling products tend to get a bigger advertising budget, just like movies.

Did you ever think that maybe people have given the other stuff a shot and thought it was crap?  I'm pretty sure that happens a lot more than people just "not knowing" the other game, because if the other game was any good the companies would have been sure to advertise it.  It's not like they don't do focus group testing.  And even if they didn't know, then why don't people know by word of mouth?  When you think FPS this gen, the first thing most people think and recommend is COD.  Not any other of the smaller games out there.

Like it or not, you have to have a product that greatly surpasses the top dogs before people will want to try it out.  It's tough competition in a crowded market.  It's like how everyone's trying to be the COD/Halo/WoW killer - you won't get there doing a half ass job.



youarebadatgames on 15 February 2011
LivingMetal said:
youarebadatgames said:

Sales are the only thing that matters to companies and quality is entirely subjective, however sales is a good reflection of what a large population thinks about a game...


Stop right there.  The majority isn't always right.


How do you define right in something as subjective as a game?



Edgeoflife on 15 February 2011
LivingMetal said:
youarebadatgames said:

Sales are the only thing that matters to companies and quality is entirely subjective, however sales is a good reflection of what a large population thinks about a game...


Stop right there.  The majority isn't always right.

In my experiance the majority is usually wrong 



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youarebadatgames on 15 February 2011
Edgeoflife said:
LivingMetal said:
youarebadatgames said:

Sales are the only thing that matters to companies and quality is entirely subjective, however sales is a good reflection of what a large population thinks about a game...


Stop right there.  The majority isn't always right.

In my experiance the majority is usually wrong 


If I actually liked those popular games and you told me my tastes were wrong I'd tell you to GTFO.



Edgeoflife on 15 February 2011
youarebadatgames said:
Edgeoflife said:
youarebadatgames said:

Sales are the only thing that matters to companies and quality is entirely subjective, however sales is a good reflection of what a large population thinks about a game.

What a large population thinks > what a small subgroup thinks, both in $$$ and weight of opinion.  The large selling games are giving the majority of people what they want, and is rightly the focus of game developers.  To the majority, high selling games are quality.

Your tastes aren't any better than theirs, and if you think the game is trash why are so many copies being sold?  Even if there are minor imperfections, it's not enough to stop people from buying them, so it obviously isn't as bad as you think.  For all the bitching people do about BLOPs, they're still buying it and enjoying it.

So keep hating on COD, Just Dance, and other popular things.  To me that just sounds like the whining of a bitch that wants people to like what he likes, but gets angry when people don't.

I never called any of the games trash and you are wrong about the sales are what matters to companies, it's the revenue that matters, it doesn't matter if a game sold 10 million if they didn't make a profit it on, if the devs costs where high and they spent a fortune on advertising even an incredibly high selling game can be a financial failure,  and you say majority opinion trumps minority but what you don't realize is that it's not their opinion that the game is better, they might just not know about the other game or not played it, games without much advertising can easily go under the radar so really you don't have any valid points


Sales are directly related to revenue, so yes they do matter.  Companies will advertise according to what they project, so high selling products tend to get a bigger advertising budget, just like movies.

Did you ever think that maybe people have given the other stuff a shot and thought it was crap?  I'm pretty sure that happens a lot more than people just "not knowing" the other game, because if the other game was any good the companies would have been sure to advertise it.  It's not like they don't do focus group testing.  And even if they didn't know, then why don't people know by word of mouth?  When you think FPS this gen, the first thing most people think and recommend is COD.  Not any other of the smaller games out there.

Like it or not, you have to have a product that greatly surpasses the top dogs before people will want to try it out.  It's tough competition in a crowded market.  It's like how everyone's trying to be the COD/Halo/WoW killer - you won't get there doing a half ass job.

The companies that can afford it will advertise everything in order to REACH their projections, without the advertisement/hype the big name games would get crushed but the small name ones 

Again if they can afford to, hardly anyone can afford the advertising COD and Halo have, and you do really think people who play COD have played every other fps out there and deceided everything else was worse? Are you honestly that dense? 

I never said otherwise, hell thats my whole point, game sales have very little to do with the quality of the game



LivingMetal on 15 February 2011
youarebadatgames said:
LivingMetal said:
youarebadatgames said:

Sales are the only thing that matters to companies and quality is entirely subjective, however sales is a good reflection of what a large population thinks about a game...


Stop right there.  The majority isn't always right.


How do you define right in something as subjective as a game?


I don't.  Therefore, no one else should.  I enjoy what I enjoy.



Edgeoflife on 15 February 2011
youarebadatgames said:
Edgeoflife said:
LivingMetal said:
youarebadatgames said:

Sales are the only thing that matters to companies and quality is entirely subjective, however sales is a good reflection of what a large population thinks about a game...


Stop right there.  The majority isn't always right.

In my experiance the majority is usually wrong 


If I actually liked those popular games and you told me my tastes were wrong I'd tell you to GTFO.

Not bad just worse then alot of other games that don't sell as much, and you'd still be wrong nomatter what you say 



LivingMetal on 15 February 2011
Edgeoflife said:

The companies that can afford it will advertise everything in order to REACH their projections, without the advertisement/hype the big name games would get crushed but the small name ones 

Again if they can afford to, hardly anyone can afford the advertising COD and Halo have, and you do really think people who play COD have played every other fps out there and deceided everything else was worse? Are you honestly that dense? 

I never said otherwise, hell thats my whole point, game sales have very little to do with the quality of the game


And what if game "a" sold great an one territory, but sold poorly in another.  Is that suppose to mean that it's a bad game in one territory and a better game in the other?