Err... good! The journalistic reviews already influence buyers alot more than they should, given they are often questionable.

Power to the gamer, nothing wrong with that. Let us decide what is worth buying.

It's all about the brand name and marketing. The reason why games sell so much is because of the so called "casual" gamers who look at what's popular and see commercials about. Not sure about A:CM but CoD gets a ridiculous amount of marketing and that's one of the main reasons it sells so much.

Most people simple not care about about the gaming world in the same way we do. They can buy one game each month just to have fun, maybe watch E3...but that's about it, they do not care (or don't know) about what score a random site gives a certain game they saw in a ad. And this is one of the reasons why good games normally don't get the sales they deserved.

We core gamers alone can't satisfy the publishers desire sales anymore.

Branding > anything people say on the Internet.  This being said, it is important to see how long-term sales hold up next to early on, as early sales can be a sign of preorder strength.

Other things besides this show that game journalism is really close to being a joke anyhow.  It really doesn't pay enough to get reall professionals working in the field at this point.  The Internet now consists of monetizing celebrity status above everything else.

It sold because it was COD. I didn't see any advertising (in the US, I know you're in the UK), and I wouldn't think one of 4 available bundles is heavily bundling...

Definitely. Youtube channels of people playing random games are more solvent than IGN.

SCEE seems to be more on the ball with marketing than SCEA. Still think that it wouldn't have done nearly as well if it was named something else.

I understand about the advertising being the reason, but I at least believe that the product also needs to be appealing to sell.

The job people want CoD Vita to do is simple: shoot things or people for an hour. Does it do that? Yes. The review scores need to come up to match that expectation, not on the unrealistic one if it being a worthy sequel to console CoDs in artistic terms.

A lot of people had these games on pre-order and other didn't bother to read reviews.  Word of mouth will destroy and chance of them having legs though.

I'm not saying it's good. I just mean it's not 33 Metascore bad. That should be reserved for games that are broken, not just not up to expectations.

Is it really THE worst game from a major publisher to come out in the last year?

I haven't played it (OK) but I watched a lot of review playthroughs (with no understanding of a modern shooter) and it looked like a game where you shoot things.

I'm not really seeing any evidence here that reviews don't affect games. You've just presented two poorly reviewed games that have sold well, and a bunch of well reviewed games that haven't. You've not presented any evidence that the review scores didn't reduce the sales POTENTIAL of these games. A variety of factors go into how well or poorly a game sells, and reviews have always and will remain a factor. You have some evidence that some poorly reviewed games did okay. Honestly, those numbers are not that amazing, ESPECIALLY CoDs, which didn't even come close to cracking 1 million worldwide despite being a part of one of the biggest franchises in the industry.

But if you look at the best selling games...well, you will only find a small handful of games poorly recieved by critics,and they are typically either launch content or bundled with hardware, such as Wii Play and Kinect Adventures. Games being sold to a non gaming audience.

You're going to need a LOT more evidence then this to make the argument that reviews play no role in game purchases anymore, especially to convince someone like myself whom actually uses game reviews to help me decide whether or not I get a game.