Not even pro sales fanboys like GeneralMLD think sales = quality.

A measure of a games quality is its critic reception

Sales = RELEVANCY and WINNER. Two important traits when comparing one game to another or one console to another but quality never enters into the equation.

Pornography is a high demand product, but few pornographic movies come close to the sales of the worst independent movies. On top of this, comparing two very different markets (pornography to entertainment) to judge quality of the products within these markets doesn’t make sense; after all, is there any metric we could use to judge the quality of a movies vs. the worldwide supply of Wheat?

Not exactly.

If I make a game, sell it out of my basement, which is labelled 'beware of the tiger' and you make a game that bugs on the title screen and is unplayable, both of our games will sell the same (0 after returns) does that mean they are both exactly as good?

Sales are a good indicator of quality, but there are things that will increase/decrease sales without changing quality; being the sort of game that reviewers like, advertising.

4 words, Shadow Of The Colossus

Just to be clear ...

I am not saying that higher sales implies that a product is higher quality than a product with lower sales; I am saying that products that achieve high sales are high quality in many ways which are often not considered.

I do agree with that to a point but I don't think sales is the only factor you have to consider. It's just one of many.

That is more or less what I was refering to by saying a braindead romance in there. I also agree that it's what Harry Potter basically had as well. You also said it youself, it had braod appeal. Well that broad appeal is the problem. To have that broad appeal you shoot quality in the foot, and bury it.

Which is why I wasn't looking at pornography on the individual scale, but on the whole as an entertianment medium. Pornography as a whole is more popular than any other given entertainment medium. I am not judging the quality of the products within these media, I am outright judging the entertainment as a whole by popularity, or "sales," if you will. Also, I am certain that pornography falls under entertainment, hence comparing it against other entertainment media is perfectly valid. Obviously food isn't an entertainment.I am basically saying that pornography is a higher quality entertainment than books, due to more popularity. Which sounds as utterly dumb and retarded as saying sales=quality.

As for your metric that you asked about, that was the whole point of this laughable topic.

So marketing doesn't play a role in this? Price doesn't play a role in this? Exposure? Release dates? Nothing. Basically, if it's good, it will sell and if it failed, it's because it wasn't good enough. That's bullshit.

There are terrible movies in great franchises that do better than good movies with no exposure. There are expensive or unheard of restaurants that provide better food and service than McDonald's but because of advertisements, price or location, brand name, or convenience, they get beaten out. There are musicians that produce quality music and don't get discovered and suddenly, because of an image change or because they were finally found out by the right producer, that exact same person with their ten year old song suddenly becomes a media sensation.

How you came to your conclusion that people only spend money on quality is beyond me. People spend money based on their intelligence. I'm sure there was a better house in a better location that I could be living in but, due to my lack of research, I've never found it. I got what appeared to be the best deal as far as I knew. Sometimes quality is recognized and success follows. Sometimes quality goes undiscovered.

On the plus side, you seem to have excellent grammar.

First off, True Blood came out after Twlight. Second, Buffy is NOT like Twilight. I also realize the audience is out there very well, which is exactly what I call the lcd. I also don't see what you mean by dehumanizing people.Maybe you don't quite udnerstand what "least common denominator" means, so let me explain.

You have something that is quality, usually there are people under some intellectual threshold which will not "get it" due to their idiocy and hence not buy it. However if you set the bar low, you will get all those idiots, AND a good chunk of intellectuals. Basically that's more people, for a shittier quality. It's simple really and I don't understand how you are not seeing it.

You used Shakespeare as your example, and I already told you, Shakespeare wasn't the post popular at all, it was jsut popular to the upper and meiddle classes of the time, the ones who could actually watch it. The reason it's popular now is because the people who think it's quality, the intellectual ones, beat it into the idiots' heads it's of good quality.

The best part is, then you start getting into the real world with crap like Marketing, and your idea of sales=quality becomes even more hilarious.

Edit: I really shouldn't say intellect but should say smart since it's not just about intelligence, but also about how much you know, researched, experienced, etc. about a given topic/idea/area/etc.