The gaming industry is a relatively young and small expensive business. We can extrapolate from sales on what's trending, and what will be trending from design choices to a lot more about future games. The most discussed sales are platform sales. They show how much support the platform will get, and from which developers it will get it from. Based on it's regional and software sales. This is all just an extension of ones interest in gaming news. There's also a sense of community in discussing these news and what they mean, which are also correlated with sales. Overall, this may or may not effect ones interest in certain games and/or platforms. It will however help with making educated decisions in what software geamers, as consumers, will buy based on their interest.

I agree that your examples tell how limited your understanding is of the gaming industry, and you're generalizations also show how you view the communities you're trying to criticize.

Every entertainment medium has fanboys and fans who care about their idols or favorite product, but the only entertainment medium where I see that a lotof people care about sales is in the gaming industry. For example, you don't see Madonna fans saying that Lady gaga sucks because madonna has more money or more sales, or you don't see Cleveland fans saying that Lebron sells more tickets and Jerseys than kobe, so kobe sucks. They use the product or idol to fight "Lady gaga sings better or is more creative than Madonna" "Lebron is better right now, kobe is too old" "Inception is an amazing movie!, better than Avatar!! (avatar sold more)" etc. So why sales are so important to gamers? why gamers are so proud about sales?

This is a charts website so I'm not specifically talking about vgchartz, just in general. <---

Edit: why we use sales to fight? that's the real point of the thread. <---

The roots of this phenomenon go all the way back to the 16-bit wars between Nintendo and SEGA, where fans of both companies became more tribalized and would frequently use the sales / popularity of their preferred console when arguing which was better. This of course carried over to the 32/64-bit gen when Sony entered the fray and promptly laid claim to the top spot in the console "wars", and it's pretty much been that way ever since with gamers split among the 3 tribes... Sony, M$ and Nintendo.

Couple all that with the fact that the gaming industry is the most sales-driven and dependent out of all the major entertainment industries (music and movies), and you have a recipe for one of the biggest weapons that fanboys love to bludgeon each other with in the console wars.

The closest comparison in other industries would be the way it's currently Apple fans vs everybody else in the mobile market.

I guess it sort of seems like a competition where many people choose their sides and have an ever ongoing war, hoping their side beats the other sides and revel in the joy of beating them. How this all started, I`m not too sure...

I don`t necessarily care about sales in that sense, but just that I hope games sell well, or well enough (at least the ones that are good and deserve good sales.) I don`t want any games to be bombing. People worked hard on these, and jobs can be on the line. Don`t want them out of a job.

I would have to say that sports fans in general trump anything that comes from gaming fans. All that happens in a the console wars is a lot of shit talking, name calling or trolling. In sports, the fans beat the living crap out of each other over it. I rather be a gaming fan where we can at least control ourselves to some extent.

Sorry, OP, but Vivster is absolutely right. This is solely due to your limited exposure.

As someone who used to frequent some forums of Pop artists (mainly Britney Spears), I can tell you that sales are 1000x more important to them. To the point that people said they were crying when x album didn't do well, that they've being having nightmares about it, etc. Also when they attack other Pop stars, they go all out. The insults thrown around here are nothing compared to Lady Gaga fans vs Britney fans.

The wost thing I've ever heard was a Lady Gaga fan wishing that Britney's kids get cancer. Lady Gaga had one bad album and then lost most of her fanbase. People stopped buying her music because she wasn't selling well. It gets *that* bad. I don't think anything similar happens with video games. So, vg sales discussion are, all things considered, pretty darn civil compared to those of movies and music, at least from my experience.

Purely bragging rights. Sales can often have little to do with anything as far as gaming. A game that takes a couple hundred man hours to make and sells 50000 copies can be considered far more successful than a game that takes 20000 man hours but sells a million.
In the end all the bragging rights likely with no real backing at all.

Since the crash of the whole industry, it has become a realization that sales matter big time in the video game market. Compared to music and movies, it is also dependent on hardware. If that "hurdle" disappears, sales will not be as relevant anymore.

It's not video game fans per se. just the ones that need something to brag about (AKA annoying people). and other entertainment business don't involve multiple platforms.