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Khuutra on 29 March 2010
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axt113 said:
Khuutra said:

Stop this.

Trying to draw an absolute correlation between sales and quality is just as disingenuous as trying to draw an absolute correlation between Metascore and quality. Neither of them makes allowance for divergent value metrics, and neither of them is actually useful as a way to pick out games to play.

We can't kow if a 2-D Mario would have outsold 64 at the same time because it didn't happen. Trends may suggest certain things, certainly but those same trends tend to ignore the fact that NSMBWii was coming off of a 15+ year period without a mainline 2-D Mario on consoles. More, he has a point in that 3-D was the huge pushing thing for the N64, and contributed a great deal to pushing Mario 64 as far as it went.

Analyses of sales trends can rarely be cut and dry, and they certainly cannot be to the degree that you present here.

Sales prove consumers preferred one over the other, and long term sales of 2D mario proves they are classic games

We can show that Super Mario has never lost its appeal and its ability to move hardware, while 3D mario has never had that ability or appeal.

Don't give me that garbage about 15+ years, NSMB DS was also a huge seller, and SMB 3 and SMBW both followed other Marios close by and were huge sellers.

Wrong, Mario 64 was never on par with the Super Mario's so obviously 3D wasn't as interesting to the Market

You can try and spin the facts as much as you want, but the truth doesn't spin, 3D Mario just never had, nor ever will have the appeal of Super Mario, and Nintendo was stupid to ever try and use 3D mario as their flagship games

The langugage you use is too broad and non-specific; you mean to say that more consumers played New Supr Mario Bros. Wii than played Super Mario Galaxy, which means that they appealed to different value metrics. This does not make the former better than the later; it simply means that it has a wider appeal. There's a difference.

You can mak hypotheses all you want, but the fact of the matter is that it isn't possible to know, and no measure of flat-out denials will change the fact that it's not possible to know. I tend to think a 2-D Mario probably would have sold better, yes, but pretending that it's a sure thing is the very height of fallacy.

More, saying that 3-D Mario never had the ability to move hardware is itself fallacious; it's a pretty sure bet that if a non-packaged game sells to 33% of the userbase (ala Mario 64) then it probably moved some hardware.

My primary point is that trying to draw an absolute correlation between appeal and quality is fallacious to the point of being ludicrous.