@joecool7, you make no sense, first you say NOE releasing the title has nothing to do with NOA then toward the end you say that NOA was in fact looking at NOE to see how the title did??? Reggie said his damn self that they were looking at Europe.

I agree.

F#$% metacritic. It's turned into something irrelevant to sales. And no, that study made a while back only proves reviews affect sales IF people read them. It did not prove THAT most gamers read reviews.

GTA IV getting outsold by Mario Kart Wii should make it clear that review averages don't correlate to sales. If the game sells well, THAT will matter more than reviews.

Matter to who else besides the companies??

Honestly out of all of the 3 Wii RPGs, The Last Story and Pandora's Tower got me excited. Xenoblade is interesting, but I have to more first without ruining the story.

They matter more than reviews, since those companies actually get money from sales, and that they, or at least their stockholders, would want more such games.

So the really irrelevant one is reviews, since they don't really matter. People just think they matter.

??? you just repeated what I said, im sure the average gamer doesnt really care about sales. Id wager most people who have no financial stake in these companies care more about the reviews than the sales

I wouldn't wager that. Just because you don't care about sales doesn't mean you thereby care about reviews.

And reviews are just a vocal minority when it comes to quality judgements. Critics scathed Star Wars when it first came out. And I don't just mean only in reviews. A lot of critical writing from the 80s and 90s really hates on the Star Wars original trilogy, seeing especially the first movie as what brought down what they saw as a golden age of movies in the 70s. But who really decided it was good? The critics or moviegoers who gave lots of good word of mouth?

That is why sales matter, but more importantly, why reviews don't matter.

Well if thats the case then McDonalds makes the best food ever, and Twilight and Transformers are some of the best movies ever made

Ah, that has almost become a cliche every time I bring the mainstream up.

First of all, Twilight and Transformer are NOT the most popular movies ever. Have you even looked at lists of the highest grossing movies? But even more important is adjusting for inflation, which also shows which movie had the most attendence, which is Gone with the Wind. Plus those other two franchise are front-loaded, which means people more just pack into them on the first week and then move on to something else. Something with legs, from Titanic to My Big Fat Greek Wedding, resonates more, as they got most of their box office from word-of-mouth (which I also mentioned about first Star Wars movies, while the prequels were instead front-loaded).

Second of all, MacDonalds doesn't sell its food for the same price at a diner. It would go under if it did that. Instead, the food model is you get what you pay for. But that does mean that people do think the food is good for the price paid. People wouldn't go there if they thought a three dollar burger or dollar-fifty fries wasn't even worth that little. Also, MacDonalds is good with its service. You order what you want, and they give you want you want as quickly as they can give it to you. So Macdonalds is not the best food ever, but it is really great at quick, affordable, and decent food. And that is why it serves so many.