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jacks81x on 24 September 2009
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WereKitten said:
Alterego-X said:
dougsdad0629 said:

I've seen a lot of people talk about how quickly ODST outsold Killzone 2, however a quick search on this site will yield you many examples of how sales numbers do not directly reflect a game's quality.  Mediocre games such as Wii Music (2.62 million) and Sonic and the Secret Rings (2.06 million) are just a couple of examples.  Let's go in the other direction.  An outstanding title such as Boom Blox hasn't even cracked a million.  I used Wii games as examples because the Wii is full of mediocre titles with huge sales and outstanding titles with lousy sales.  Don't judge a game based on sales numbers.  ODST outsold Killzone 2 in 24 hrs.?  So what!  I'm not saying ODST is mediocre.  I've read several positive reviews.  I'm just saying play Killzone 2 before you judge.

I have to disagree. 

While it is impossible to perfectly determine a game's objective quality, sales might be the closest we might get to it. 

 

You say Wii Music is "mediocre" and Boom Box is "outstanding". What is your proof for that? Your personal taste. Preference. Opinion. Subjectivity. This is of course important, when you want enjoy a game for yourself. But not when you want to defend its objective "quality".

 

Look at it from an outsider, unbiased point of view:

Some guy tells a joke. No one laughs.

A second guy tells another joke. A girl laughs loudly, and some others are smiling.

A third guy tells a third joke. The crowd erupts in laughter, they tell it to everyone they know, someone writes it on the Internet, and it becomes a famous meme. 

Which joke was the funniest? Of course the one that the entire planet found funny. After all, we, the overall population, define the terms, decide what words mean. 

Of course, in case of gaming, there are some factors that make it less clear. For example, obviously different genres have different standard. The best ice cream doesn't have "more quality" than the best movie, it is apples to oranges. 

Also, "sales" doesn't directly mean "popularity", because marketing, and some other things might manipulate that somehow.

But we can still safely say that no random fad, or powerful marketing could sell millions of copies of anything that everyone hates, and if a games is appealing to the masses, it will find its way.

 

 

Your joke similitude doesn't hold for a simple reason: sales don't equate to the enjoyment the buyers had from a game, even if you were to take that as a candidate measure of quality. Most game sales happen without the buyer having tried the game first, thus the satisfaction with the product is statistically unknown.

Some games are cult hits even with poor sales because the little audience they gathered is very vocal about their perceived quality. Others sell well over time because of word of mouth which once again is rooted in user satisfaction. And others sell well but are rubbish. Maybe well-marketed, maybe sporting some popular icon, maybe appealing for people who don't look for much quality, and yet still rubbish.

Just as a fever might make you perform blood tests looking for an infection, but might end up being caused by something else entirely, so sales can suggest that there's the chance of great quality, which deserves better examination. But there's no strict correlation between symptom and a single possible cause.

Very well said.