How did I know this would come down to another "quality" debate? So disappointing... As usual, I have to point this out: reviews do not equal profits. It doesn't matter one whit what reviews say about games, the only thing that ultimately matters is how much the game earns.
Consider: if an astronomically acclaimed game was given unequivocal support by every review medium gaming has to turn to only sold 500 copies, would you call it a success? I should hope not; unless it cost peanuts to make, it'd never make back the cost of making it at that number of sales. That kind of support compared to the sales would indicate that the review system was horribly flawed, not reflecting the tastes of gamers at large.
Conversely, if a game received nothing but a mass of negative reviews from every review source out there, yet sold 100 million copies, would you call it a failure? Again, not likely; if anything, that kind of sales in the face of such negativity indicates a problem with the review system, not the game.
These are both extreme examples, but the point remains: reviews are meaningless on their own. Without correlation with a hard statistic like sales numbers, the numbers generated by opinion-centric tallies are entirely valueless for anything save perhaps proving the prevailing tastes of the people who wrote the reviews.
Sky Render - Sanity is for the weak.
