Sales vs. MetaScore: A Study using the Xbox 360

[DonFerrari]

RolStoppable said:
Games that have high development budgets are more likely to be good than games with low development budgets. But more importantly, games with high development budgets are more likely to have high marketing budgets than games with low development budgets. More awareness of a game's existence significantly increases the likelihood for high sales. You'll find a lot more cases where correlation is also causation when looking at sales vs. marketing budgets, so for example, Kinect Adventures wouldn't be an outlier anymore.

Beyond that, it's a matter of general appeal that each given game has. A high metascore nor high marketing budget doesn't mean all that much when a narrow demographic has been targeted. Something like Dark Souls is never going to sell as much as Call of Duty, even if development budget, marketing budget and metascore were identical. Low rated games that sell well or decently are commonly based on a non-video game IP, so they draw their appeal from an outside source; Hannah Montana: The Movie, the lowest rated game you have on your list, is such an example.

Very good summary.