What has sales got to do with quality?  Let's not go up that false path.  As for reviews, they will always tend to skew to poular genres with known approaches.  Look at the first reviews for 2001 - middling.  Now the film is rated higher than anything that came out at the same time.  Reviews are just a guide and easily stumped by new stuff.  Look at the reviews for Wii Sports then consider it is actually the single most influential title this gen resulting in Kinect, Move and a score of copycats : yet reviewers had no idea how to properly evaluate it.

The point I'm making is the team is a critical darling producing works that generate far more long term notice than other works - just as Warners happily let Kubrick do what he wanted so long as the results were good (and I mean long term good).  Today ICO is still revered while Mass Effect, for example, is often looked on as being overated vs its flaws.  With every year critical views of Mass Effect will drop a bit until they settle where they should.

I doubt Team ICO costs much and they are backed by Sony.  So long as Sony accepts it they'll take their time.

I don't know if that's right or wrong in the videogame industry but I know it's what's happening here.

I have now reached about halfways into Ico and I must say that I am still disappointed and the game seems to be quite overrated. Although I also must say that it has picked up quite a bit compared to the first hour and Im enjoying it a bit and at this rate I might think it was brilliant when all is said and done.

The grafix are surprisingly good for a ten year old game.

I'm sorry but talking about sales isn't allowed but you can make plainly false and wild statements like ''Mass effect is often looked as being overratedd'' Well fine if we are allowed to make false statements. Ico and SotC are often viewed as being awful and overrated. 

Every year critical views of mass effect will drop? Is that why the sequel was higher rated than the first game? I gave solid evidence that games like Gears, ME and Uncharted have been much bigger critical darlings and you came back with lies that have no proof at all. Those games were critically better received and sold better. That is the simple fact.  Even the very late port of ME2 on PS3 was better received than a combination of both Ico and SotC. 

If The Last Guardian comes out and doesn't sell well do you really think a company that is losing money at a horrendous rate is going to go ''Oh well we lost millions and millions of dollars on it but oh well let's keep them''. Any game in development for 7 years is going to have a very high budget purely from wages, day to day opertions etc etc.

Duke? Is that you?