It's like you have x-ray eyes and can see right through to the heart of the matter. Personally though, I think you're wrong but only because you're not taking the long view. I don't think video games have been around long enough for anyone to have a very good perspective on them. History will have the final say. If you're around long enough you could be one of the people writing that history.

Just to be clear, on the matter of aesthetics I'm basically a Kantian. Since we're talking about games I'll give an example: Chess is a good game and anyone who says differently is plain wrong. I stand by that statement and take it as a matter of fact, not a matter of opinion.

Okay, so, let's break that down a bit with an example.

Professor Layton is averaging over an 85% on gamerankings. We'd all agree that's within range of being considered quality by reviewers. It's sold 40K in a week in NA. Far below the rate most consider successful. On the other hand in Japan it's sold almost 900K, and was also reviewed highly. We can't check legs for North America yet so we'll leave that out.

In Japan it's got 2/2 qualifications for quality. In America only 1/2. Is it a better game in Japan than America? Should 18 reviewers really be a meassure of the average opinions of tens of millions of gamers? You yourself pointed out that there is a huge disconnect between reviewers and the current gaming market. Are you saying you now consider them a valid meassure of quality? And who are they a meassure of quality for? My Mother wouldn't enjoy Halo, but she loves Nintendogs.

There are far too many factors here Bod. At best, we could try and divide everyone into categories to meassure quality for individual markets, but even then there are a lot of variables, and there is an entire genre of games (mini/casual) that doesn't have a single highly reviewed game in it. Is there no quality at all in the genre? By your own suggested standards of meassurement there are not.

I have no problems getting into a discussion of standards of opinion on quality of games with you.  Comparing my opinion to yours, and defending my own.  I will do that with anyone, but there is no good standard of meassure for a categorical discussion of "good" and "bad" in video game quality.

Sorry Legend, but I don't really consider many games on the 360 very special. And for my tastes the 360 actually has the worst library of games, despite the year headstart.

I don't know whether you can use the games quality to denote success either... perhaps you can argue it's a great console when it has good games, but that doesn't mean it's successful (I bet the N-Gage had some good games, doesn't mean it wasn't terrible)

Even then I wouldn't say 360 is great, because I judge how great a console is on it's hardware, which means reliability/practicality etc.
True I would use the games to determine whether I want the console, but it could have a vast library of excellent games and I might even go out and buy one, but if the hardware is ugly, stupidly shaped, badly designed/made and hard to develop for then it's still a crap console... it just happens to be a crap console with good games.
(bare in mind the above was a fictional crap console)

I don't think I'm the one that's wrong in wanting people to post in the proper forums and to stop derailing and ruining many threads by trying to turn everything into a discussion about numbers.  There's a sales discussion forum, why can't people simply talk about sales in there?  The way I see it is that the sales forum isn't enough for some people and they wish to constantly gloat and they can't stand to see a forum that talks about a console they don't like in a positive way so they go into it to try to rub the numbers in peoples faces..

Why would we need to divide it into markets? Take Halo, as an example. It sells well here, and in certain European countries, but poorly everywhere else. Yes, that absolutely means that this game is less good than it would be if everyone in the world liked it. A better game would do better in Japan. Regions shouldn't matter. The better a game sells, the more that speaks to its quality.

You're saying that the picture is fuzzy, and thus we can't reach conclusions. I'm saying the picture is fuzzy, but we can reach conclusions anyway.

Make sure we note that: I'm not arguing that the picture isn't fuzzy. I'm arguing that all pictures are at least partially fuzzy, so where do you draw the line? Where does a picture become so fuzzy that "fact" becomes "opinion?" VGChartz is consistently 10-15 percent off, on average, on a monthly basis. NPD states they're 1-2 percent off. And this is just what they tell us is true: what if they're wrong? They could lie. It would require a vast conspiracy, and while I don't think a vast conspiracy is likely, it's possible. As in .00001 percent, but that's possible.

Clearly, you draw the line before I do. I think I can objectively and conclusively say that Bioshock is a better game than Motorstorm, as an example, because it excels in all the metrics we've presecibed. Bioshock against Halo, though? That is, in my opinion, too fuzzy, so that's about where I'd draw the line, personally.

Given that there is nothing absolute, everyone draws the line for "opinion" and "fact" in different places. I draw the line at a different place than you.

I agree that sometimes there's too much sales discussion seeping into the Gaming section. But I don't think you can say that the Sales forum is the only place for sales talk any more than the Gaming forum is the only place for gaming talk, though.

Obviously there's no point in arguing opinion. The argument that sales are an indicator of quality is merely a devil's advocate sort of thing, as far as I'm concerned, to illustrate that those who want to argue that "quality is more important than sales" are mostly elitists.

Yes, I wish there was less interuptions into discussions of personal taste on this site. Talking about each other's tastes is a means to expanding everyone's. But those who claim "the best lineup" (read: their personal taste) is a measure of "success," are far more insidious than those who bring up sales at the wrong place.

No, regions do matter. They absolutely matter, and you know that. The Japanese reject games of certain genres on principle. Halo sold poorly in Japan, but so do all FPS games. Is an entire genre of games now bad in Japan, just as an entire genre of games (casual games) are bad in America based on reviews?

I am not arguing that there is an absolute. What I'm saying is that there are just far too many variables in quality. You said sales, reviews, and legs all add up to equal quality, and yet those things all 3 correspond only rarely. Many games sell to different markets. Again, you yourself made an entire topic about how out of touch reviewers are. There is no general analysis of quality.

And what do we do about games that were reviewed highly, but then had those reviews retracted later? Black & White and FFVII come to mind, both of which appear on many official review site's "most overrated games" lists. We trust reviewer's opinions the first time. Do we trust them again the second? Does that not invalidate the first opinions? What about things like longevity? Is it still fun to go back and play Final Fantasy VII?

My problem with this Bod is you are trying to simplify something that has too many variables to be simplified.

On a video game site yes.

On a video game sales sight, no.

Still, that's not how it goes. After all most people see the N64 as a grand failure. Yet it had the best 3 games of the generation on it.

At the end of the day sales are the only real metric we have that's based on something tangible.

NO cause factually success of a product on the market is determined by how much profits it makes.  

Personally games should be judged by quality, but you said success.  Maybe you should rephrase. 

Any game with millions of fans isn't overrated. You may not like the game but the fact that millions of others do is a pretty good indication that it's a quality game.