What do you think impacts sales more. Hype or word of mouth?

I personally think it's a mixture of both. A game with a good word of mouth (Call of Duty Modern Warfare) Can get really good legs. The PS3 version had a 400k opening and has 5.5 million right now. Beating huge games like God of War 3, MGS4, e.t.c. But a game in a series which has a good word of mouth can make the sequel sell a lot better. (Call of Duty, Halo, Uncharted) but at the same time these sequels need to have a lot of hpye and come out at the right time. Do you agree with me? I think some people here may have arguments here but that is accepetable in this type of situation. Just try not to get into fights.

Express your opinon!

new ip: word of mouth

sequels: hype

There has never been a new ip that has had absurdly high week 1 sales.

At the same time it is very rare for a sequel to an unsuccessful game to be very successful. Although world of mouth is important to both while hype is mostly important for sequels.

Depends. We've seen both ends of the spectrum this generation with stuff like Just Dance and recent entries in the Call of Duty series.

If you've got enormous (really enormous i.e. CoD-level) hype, then word of mouth is a non-factor since everybody playing the game on the second day of its release will naturally make everyone else want to buy it, even if the game is puke. If you get great word of mouth, but only three people initially bought the game, it usually becomes rather worthless.

Some hype and lots of positive word of mouth beat lots of hype and some positive word of mouth any day, though. It's like a Just Dance versus one of those zillions of random shooters on the HD consoles that don't do huge, but only respectable numbers.

I would side with good word of mouth simply because majority of sales happen after launch, and with good WoM you can get great legs. Hype seems to be influential mostly at launch.

i agree its a mixture but in a different way.  i think hype gives a better first week sales while word of mouth gives the game good legs.

First Week : Hype
Lifetime : Word of Mouth

hype produces word of mouth so i would say hype.

To a large extent, hype influences the first week of sales while word of mouth influences everything after week 4. The period between week 2 and week 4 is a bit hard to define, as it's largely influenced by both.

The absolute vast majority of games sell more than half of their sales after week 4. There are obviously some exceptions, but not a lot. The Call of Duties are such an exception, with Black Ops actually selling near two thirds of their sales in the first month.

Whether word of mouth or hype is more important depends on the genre of the game. If it's a shooter, hype is more important, simply because so many new shooters release that compete directly with it. It's simply incredibly hard for a shooter to maintain very high sales for a long while due to the excess releasing of shooters.

For most genres outside of shooters, word of mouth is more important. Nearly all games that sell well (more than 1-2 million) have the majority of their sales coming after week 4.

It's also worth mentioning that nearly every single title that makes a franchise into a success relies nearly completely on word of mouth.

For shooters, it's hard to say which is more important for lifetime sales.  For the majority it's hype, but some gain immense sales from word of mouth (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare comes to mind)
For  non-shooters, word of mouth is practically always more important.

hype is a large determinant of initial sales.  WoM comes into play to determine legs.

Hype easily.