That depends. A lot of people will yell up and down the street Micheal Bay ruins franchises. I agree. He fails to give the characters life. They're just plot devices, or sex objects. But he, time and time again, never had Transformers flop. Which side is right than? Logically, making a billion dollars means he did right. But than what about the other side. They're meaningless?

In this day and age, a common fear is not being seen as cool, so if someone feels that a game is considered "cool," then they won't play it. I'm certainly not talking about everyone but even if a game receives critical acclaim, like Tearaway for example, people will ignore it because it isn't considered cool, which is also the reason games like CoD and Assassin's Creed continue to sell so many. Everyone has a different definition of quality as well but popular appeal will end up garnering more attention than high quality in most cases but there are always exceptions.

What is this "quality" you speak of?

Polish, smoothness of gameplay, attention to detail, attentive manipulation of the player's psychology including the different trance states games can induce, ergonomic effeciency, reliability of mechanics to create fairness, responsiveness, respectful content quantity. There is a ton of other generic stuff like that which you can choose to learn about if you set your class to game designer and spend your gold on the right books and educational documents.

Quality game: One that is almost completely bug-free, perfectly paced, and has far more content than just the main story mode. Everything else comes down to opinions. I mean how often have you played a 90+ metascore game and gone 'wtf?'

Quality doesn't mean fun for everyone, but at least you're not paying for a defective product or one that is lacking content. Personally there are only a few publishers that I associate with quality: Blizzard, Valve, Nintendo and to a lesser extent Take Two. It seems as though the companies that are less likely to be concerned about shareholders tend to have the highest quality games. They release them when they're done.

..and that isn't enough. That's a scientific or pragmatic way of looking at it. It's more "competence" than "quality". Not a great example but it's like thinking that designing a bridge that won't fall is enough even though it looks like a blight on the landscape.  Or "inventing" a nutritious meal that also looks great but tastes like nothing. Etc. I hate the expression of calling something soulless but what you just described pretty much is the closest thing i'd apply the term to.

So 'cute' art styles are a blight on the game? - I use the mechanical definitions but 'manipulating player psychology' is effectively a large part of being 'charming/intense/emotive'. I've done experiments using some hypnosis research I've done and applying the related techniques to creative writing, which is usually quite well recieved as such.

Not saying its all done intentionally, its like 'shading an object to make it appear 3D' - you can do it badly, but once you can do it well you can do it 'convey' things. 

People like different things ... 

Michael Bay been successful and scorned by critics only means that he's in the right. 

There is no wrong side in this case. It's just that the lesser side has to concede to respecting them but not necessarily like the work ... 

HAHAH just look at what sells the most. obviously NOT. did the new assassins creed sell because it was synonymous with quality? lol. did destiny sell because the companies backing it poured all kinds of money into making it a quality title? or did it sell because they poured all kinds of money into making sure people knew about it?
think, people.

lol thats hilarious. youre 100% right about that.