What have been the two most universally panned games in recent months? Aliens: CM and CoD Vita.
They've spawned hundreds of blogs detailing where they went wrong and why they failed. Every journalist and reviewer can't wait to share their dislike with the world. There have been plenty of mediocre games that have sold badly, but these have been singled out for sustained press coverage of their post-mortem.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-vita/call-of-duty-black-ops-declassified
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/aliens-colonial-marines
And yet:
http://www.vgchartz.com/weekly/41322/USA/
350k US debut for Aliens CM
http://www.vgchartz.com/platform/43/playstation-vita/
Second highest selling Vita game, notably far above the beloved Gravity Rush or P4G.
What does this mean? Bad review no longer affect sales. The pre-launch press could not have been worse, yet these games sell well while well-reviewed games like DMC miss expectations.
And the hardcore gamers on forums that pick up the narrative that these games are bad are also wrong. Other people clearly enjoy these games; the value they see in it led to these sales, and they didn't let the opinions of the forums stop them purchasing it. You may not enjoy it but others do.
The future drive of game demand no longer comes from the kind of person who frequents this site, and analysis/debate of why future games succeed or fail needs to stop being about the values and ideas of game reviewers or core gamers (e.g. "graphics", "technology", "the story", "DRM"). It needs to be about the values of the greater audience who are spending the money.
