I think God of War may be "better" but Animal Crossing is the bigger franchise. Kind of like... Ninja Gaiden may be better, but Mario Party is the bigger franchise. (I am not directly comparing animal crossing and mario party. Animal crossing is much better)

Okay, this thread has more than run its course.

Slightly off topic question: how many games have the name "_____ of War?" It seems like there are quite a few. Off the top of my head:

God of War
Gears of War
Dawn of War
Storm of War
HoMaM: Winds of War
Frontlines: Fuel of War
Omens of War

Honorable Mentions:

Warcraft
Warhawk
Guild Wars
Star Wars
Warhammer

If you do a Metacritic search for "War" in the games category, you get 800+ games that have the word "War" in the title.  Can anyone think of other major ones?

Super.

@bod: Well, World of Warcraft is clo9ser than Warcraft for your comparison as it has the "of".

And isn't the next COD subtitled World at War, no t too far either.

Personally I am waiting for "War of war".

More on topic but only by half: Ninja Gaiden is a better franchise than God of War and make GOW look casual in comparison but God of War is a bigger franchise.

Those conflating bigger with better might be excused in phallus measuring contexts due to the number of males wrongly thinking their mental manhood is correlated to their physical one but doing so in a video game context is just baffling to me.

animal crossing. Its gonna be MEGA on Wii!

B-but...New Super Mario Bros. sold MORE on the DEE ESS than Super Mario Sunshine did on the GAYMCOOB so it DOESN'T COUNT!111

Humor me.

Why so?

Also, Eight points is a big thing.  Is a game that has a metacritic of 80 the same as a game with a metacritic of 72?  With our broken review scale, anything below 80 is generally a pass.

Cause most videogame critics are infact just people that like videogames a lot. Unlike movie critics or any other type of critic that is brought up with an appreciation of the form in of itself. Very very few people enjoy videogaming as a whole... and instead just like some genres of games. They aren't trained to know what makes a good game in a genre they don't like. Which makes cross comparisons scores of different genres VERY loose.

Also as such they are going to be more biased towards games they enjoy playing... and genres they enjoy playing. I doubt many videogame critics are going to be playing Animal Crossing in their off time compared to GoW. Not because one is a better game, but because one is in a gerne that most critics don't enjoy.

Much how genres like Strategy RPGs never seem to get a fair shake.

Basically if you didn't get the last post.

With Roger Ebert. He knows what makes a good kids movie, he knows what makes a good drama movie. He's gone to school on this very subject.

Adam Seizler might know what makes a good FPS and what makes a good action game. He doesn't know what makes a good JRPG because he hates JRPGs. Even then he might not know what makes a good FPS or Action game and is just feeling through it based on how much he likes it rather then basing it off anything outside of just his own expierence with games.

From what I know of MH (not all that much), I thought the reason why MHF took off was because the PSP connectivity connected perfectly with the game design.  The console versions never did that well because it never had that functionality.

Same with AC, the GC had some limited connectivity, enough for it to gain 3 mil sales.  The much better online connectivity for DS allowed AC to really expand into its current hybrid of "sims/mmorpg" and that design worked brilliantly to get it to its 9 mil or so. 

In the end, I think it was the new platform connectivity that drove sales of both and why in both cases the handhelds (which had connectivity) did much better than the original consoles (which didn't).  Because the wii has online connectivity, the design will translate on both games to the consoles and it will achieve good sales because it preserves the reason why people like it.