Bah, that's bull. Mass Effect is a significant improvement on its predecessor, and I don't mean graphically. The core gameplay changed vastly, as did the gameflow and most importantly, the driving sequences that were removed. Critics didn't bring it up much because you made it up.

As for which is the bigger franchise, I'd be willing to bet the Mass Effect franchise is as big as the GoW franchise across all platforms, if not bigger, and it certainly would be bigger, if it was also on the PS3, simply because Mass Effect 2 is an excellent RPG and one of the best games developed this generation, and not simply a rehash franchise reboot with graphics as its selling point.

The sales of Mass Effect 2 are spread out across two platforms. It is not a fair comparison to compare the sales of the 360 version only, to GoWIII.

Your next point, you have a valid right to your opinion, but IMO, there really is no comparison. GoWIII is an action game with a fair bit of presentational appeal, and graphics as a selling point, like Avatar. Mass Effect is an epic RPG which tops its genre in all time standing, and will probably take home the most GotY awards in 2010, like The Hurt Locker.

Sure, by comparison, THL bombed, but I still laugh my ass off when I hear people complain that Avatar was a better film. It just totally the opposite of what my admittedly elitists tastes lead me to promote. IMO, Mass Effect 2 is what GoWIII could be, if it had the same gameplay and scripted experiences, spread out into a 50 hour game, with a far better story, and much deeper RPG elements.

The story alone, in ME2, will stay with me forever, and GoWIII will be forgotten with the next big exclusive(or the next GoW game). To me, there are "play and move-on" games, like God of War, Mario Brothers, and Pong. Amazing games. Couldn't live without them. However, there are also timeless games, like Final Fantasy VII, Ocarina of Time, and The Legend of Zelda.

These timeless games have gameplay that can stand up to their "play and forget" rivals, but they also have an added element of exploration, open-worldness, story, ect, that takes much more development time to impliment. They might lack in graphics compared to high end graphics focused experiences, but they make up for it in functionality and size(IE Fallout 3). They give you freedom to explore the game in your own way while maintaining the scripted events that push so much of the immersion forward.

A valid comparison to me, again, is movies. I loved The Hangover. It was great fun, and it was hilarious, but a scripted genre comedy, no matter how good, can never compare in my mind, to The Godfather. It doesn't make me angry when I hear these comparisons, but it does make me have very elitist and unfortunate thoughts.

Who cares though, some people think Big Mama's House 2 is better than The Godfather. Its subjective.

What isn't subjective is sales, and the fact that its unfair to compare the single platform sales of a multiplatform game, with sales of an exclusive, that's ignorant or bias everytime, so which is it?

Let's talk about "deserve" for a minute. IMO, Mass Effect deserves every sale it gets on PC and 360, and its success doesn't deserve the spin in this thread by Sony fans, attempting to marginalize the fact that the PC version also sold copies, copies that weren't sold on the 360 because the game was readily available on 2 consoles. No game deserves that, and spin, no matter which direction, is an insult to my intelligence.

Nearly everything you've said is a matter of opinion, I don't like Mass Effect and I think the first in the series is a horrible mess of a game. I can respect people that do like the game though. The God of War franchise to me is on the same level as the Ocarinia of Time, Shadow of the Colossos and any of the Final Fantasy games. You don't know if Mass Effect 2 will win more GOTY awards as the year hasn't finished yet. Graphic's have never been a selling point for any of the GOW games, it's the gameplay, the mythology, the story, the music and the art design that people love about God of War. 

This site does not track PC sales, it's obvious that the thread was meant to be a PS3 vs 360 thread. a

I see by this and several other posts that we're back on the "360 is for shooters!" mantra again, why does this keep coming up? Is it just because Halo is so popular? This goes in waves and has been used to at any point indicate: the 360's library is terrible, the 360 users are shallow/young/n00bs/dull/sheep or that the games themselves are just copies of each other. It's a brilliant bit of spin that is a very versatile way to trash a bunch of things at once, but doesn't repeating it get a little old?

Bah, that's bull. Mass Effect is a significant improvement on its predecessor, and I don't mean graphically. The core gameplay changed vastly, as did the gameflow and most importantly, the driving sequences that were removed. Critics didn't bring it up much because you made it up.

As for which is the bigger franchise, I'd be willing to bet the Mass Effect franchise is as big as the GoW franchise across all platforms, if not bigger, and it certainly would be bigger, if it was also on the PS3, simply because Mass Effect 2 is an excellent RPG and one of the best games developed this generation, and not simply a rehash franchise reboot with graphics as its selling point.

You wanna know why this keeps coming up? If you look at the top 20 most sold Xbox 360 games, of course excluding all the heavily bundled games, the list looks like this:

11 shooters (games wherein the only thing you do is shooting)
3 semi-shooters (games with a lot of shooting elements - GTA IV, RE5, Fallout 3)
6 NON-shooters (games with (almost) no kind of shooting elements)

The list of top 20 most sold PS3 games looks like this, also excluding heavily bundled games:

5 shooters (games wherein the only thing you do is shooting)
6 semi-shooters (games with a lot of shooting elements)
9 NON-shooters (games with (almost) no kind of shooting elements)

Anyway, i think you're overreacting. The above lists show that shooters, and games with shooting elements, on the 360 are indeed more popular than most NON-shooters. Specially compared to the Wii and PS3. That's the only thing gekkokamen was saying. Does that mean the 360 has a terrible library and that it hose no other games than shooters? No. Does that mean that 360 users are shallow/young/n00bs/dull/sheep? No. Is gekkokamen implying these things? No. Sorry, but to me it seems that you're traumatized by the fanboys that occassionaly bring these kind of things up. But in this case gekkokamen said nothing more than the FACT that shooting elements go well with the 360 audience. You can't argue with that.