UK Charts WEEK ENDING 5 September 2015

[binary solo]

KiigelHeart said:

binary solo said:

How can I be accused of making an arbitrary absolute definition when my whole original point was that impressive is a relative term? Again, people failing to understand and only wanting to look at things from their own pre-conceived notions.

37% isn't a significant improvement on the previous best result with MGS2? I think it is. Hence impressive. MGS5 has impressive sales in the UK relative to how past MGS titles have sold in the UK. I don't see how anyone can actually argue against that statement, and most people are using the word within that context.

You were expecting closer to a 50/50 split between Xb one and PS4? That's just not realistic. You were pre-destined to not have a particularly positive view on MGS sales with that sort of expectation going in. You should also examine your expectations for MGS5 overall if you expected better than the 169K it sold. Like I said, my initial reaction was fairly muted with the MGS5 total until I was reminded that it's the best launch ever for MGS in the UK by a significant %. MGS gets the sort of fan (and media?) hype that comes with franchises like GTA and Mario, so it possibly creates expectations for levels of sales like those of GTA and Mario. But the fact is MGS has always been a series where the buzz generally exceeds the sales. Huge buzz, good sales. Makes people expect more than they should from opening week sales. Leads to people being underwhelmed when sales numbers are actually reported.

Everyone knows impressive is relative term and even subjective, but still you had to wrote this "You probably don't really understand what impressive means. Any time something does better than it ever did before it is impressive, it doesn't matter if the past performance was modest or excellent." Doesn't really translate to being a relative term, does it? Seems like an absolute definition to me although there's much more to take into account. 

I don't really see much value in comparing sales to a game that was released in 2001. And with a big hyped mainstream blockbuster game like MGS I tend to compare it with other games, not only previous MGS titles, so I thought it would beat Witcher III (best game this year so far imo).

I don't know why you made a conclusion that I don't have positive view on MGS sales. It did good, no question about it, I don't think anyone's underwhelmed here. I wasn't expecting 50/50 split of course, but I expected it to be a bit closer with Ground Zeroes being free with gold a while back and split between PS4 and X1 isn't that huge in UK. There just doesn't seem to be enough interest for MGS amongs xbox gamers. I don't know why I'm surprised tho, I'm not interested in it myself and I don't know anyone who bough GZ or Phantom Pain.

OK fair enough, I can see how you can interpret that as being absolute. By "best" I mean best performance trying as hard as you can. So in that context improvement is always genuine and substantial.

Why would you compare MGS with The Witcher though? Totally different games with very different sorts of appeal, and in the case of MGS a well established fanbase on its principle platform which has been very stable for 3 generations. The Witcher has known pedigree as a top quality game series, but has never been on PS platforms. It's got somewhat of an Elder Scrolls vibe to it, being a solo, action fantasy RPG, and Elder Scrolls has done very well on the PS platform in its 2 single player outings to date, so the PS audience has been somewhat primed for The Witcher.

I meant you don't have a positive view on sales for the Xb one version, not over all. So the falling short of your expectations for that platform, which seem to have been a bit unrealistic in retrospect, would naturally cause you to think a bit less of the sales performance over all. Having low-ish expectations for the Xb one version sales makes you more inclined to view the over all sales more positively. As you noted, among your circle of Xb one gamers there's zero interest in MGS5, and that should have informed your expectations somewhat. Interestingly I only personally know 2 people with a Xb one and both of them bought MGS5 day one and love it. One guy was PS2-->360-->Xb one, the other guy has been Xbox since the 6th generation.