Huh?  You didn't see Alan Wake on the front page of Xbox Live or on the front page of youtube (and maybe this site- I don't remember).  You didn't buy Alan Wake clothes for your avatar or download episodes of the Alan Wake prequel?  They made a fucking movie in preparation for that game!  I know there weren't TV commercials but I think the game got a pretty good push.  Sometimes, good games just don't sell.

Could  Heavy Rain be considered "other" instead of game?  

In my personal humble opinion i truly believe that Alan Wake would have done better on Playstation as well.

Heavy Rain flopped. I don't see how anyone can argue against it.

Alan Wake flopped harder though.

No.

@Shio: lolwut?

Heavy Rain was advertised heavily. A whole lot more than Alan Wake.

Alan Wake was released at the same time as Red Dead Redemption.

Heavy Rain has outdone EVERYONES (Correct me if I'm wrong) expectations.

Alan Wake had always looked to be a great 90 rated game. Always. Nobody expected it to be rated so low.

Heavy Rain had everything in it that was promised. (Again, correct me if I was wrong and/or something was cut from the game).

Alan Wake didn't have everything that had been shown. Free Roam for example was removed. The PC version was canceled.

My thoughts.

Hint: You're wrong.

Please explain to us all how Heavy Rain flopped. Please.

I would like to know this as well. Hell even the devs said that the game sold wonders more than they thought it would.

Hmmm......Rather than look at the example provided in the OP (from 2008), I went back and read the entire threads.  Turns out that the whole picture was a little different.  Most people said that both games looked good, they didn't know enough about either game to make a decision, or that they were interested in one game and more than the other--which is fair.

I may be wrong, but I think that most people were pretty optimistic about Heavy Rain (thanks, in no small part to CGI and his high level of anticipation for the game) and figured it would be a good game.  Nobody expected it to sell what it's sold, though.  Alan Wake was the game that was met with hate every time somebody tried to speak positively about it (thanks, in no small part to 360 fans being over enthusiastic).  Turns out that everybody was wrong to some degree.  Heavy Rain was a huge commercial success.  Alan Wake was a good, but not great, game.

Slimebeast isn't exactly the spokesperson for the 360 fan base.

The internet tends to be wrong pretty often. Alan Wake seemed like a more mainstream game than Heavy Rain, and not many people had sufficient faith in the ability of a "movie-game" to sell large numbers, but it did.