Whoa. Apparently this turned into an NPD thread without me noticing. What's with all the bickering and meltdowns? This wasn't that surprising or unexpected a week...

Since people keep coming back to the question of "how does the Wii keep selling?" I'll just include another link to the thread I created to answer that topic. The answer: massive, dominant, exclusive software sales.

Even with mario kart that only makes 32m.

If we are going to start deciding for ourselves what counts as a AAA game without using some kind of actual system then we are going to be getting anywhere. But I'm sure that is the point of arguing this simple little interesting tidbit.

If you think we should include MKWii, which, IMO is not as good as DD or 64 except for graphics and controls. They did away with supermoves.....

If you think we should include that, then we should include ps3 games that should have beat 90, drakes, ratchet and the orange box. Which would put ps3 AAA games at 26 million, which equals an average of 1.33 AAA games per console and leaves wii with .8 AAA games per console

This was meant to be just an interesting fact about what kind of games system owners buy, thanks for raising the shields as always.

This.

great 360 sales .. yes keep going 360 :)

i don't usually comment in sale threads, but i've never seen a serious response to a fernando response. i'm amazed someone would actually spend time making one.

Woah, hold on a minute there. I've heard of going both ways, but what this going all three ways?

Nice.. it will reach that goal next week!

You've never had a three way?

The point is, metacritic scores are simply one way of defining ‘AAA’. Ultimately, these scores are subjective, and represent the opinions of a specific demographic (That is, the hardcore readership), quite removed from the mainstream, as sales would indicate . Obviously, as you imply, it’s impossible to be absolutely objective here.

Contrary to what you suggest, its not a case of simply deciding for ourselves what does or doesn’t constitute ‘AAA’, rather, what I believe RayRay102 is implying is that sales performance is another useful approach for judging quality, particularly from the point of view of the consumer. The results in this case would completely different from the metacritic approach.

By this criteria Mario Kart Wii is indeed ‘AAA’ because it pushes hardware and dominates the charts. The assumption here is that a good game is one that sells well. Nonetheless, sales data is arguably a wider and more representative measure than the views of the hardcore elite.

sales performance is not a judge of game quality, it is a judge of a role being properly filled. There are plenty of things that people buy that aren't what they could be.
The problem with each of the games you mentioned is that they lacked what they could have been. There will be games in the future that do them one better because now people know that the market is there.
Wii fit sales do not make it good, having a cheap, fun way to exercise is what makes the sales. That doesn't mean that Wii fit is the best game it could possibly be, and that is what you don't understand about metacritic. It isn't about the "hardcore" demographic, it is about the game.

Look at spiderman 3, one of the biggest selling movies of all time, along with the new 3 star wars movies. Your logic would say that these are good movies, and film critics, those hardcore elitists, know nothing about what is popular.

The difference here is that what you define as quality is according to a criteria outlined by a small elite, whether they be gaming reviewers, film reviwers etc.

What I am saying however, is that quality, being an inherently subjective measure, is in the eye of the beholder. If the majority disagree with an elite minority in a subjective evaluation, that does not make them wrong.

If you want to define quality according to metacritic, then fine, but it will clearly disadvantage Wii and DS, because some of the gaming elite won’t even accept casual titles as games at all.

But to define quality according to sales is equally valid, and more representative. You can’t deny that it is more representative, and it's all subjective after all.

Edit: If you want to continue this discussion, then lets do it in the other thread. http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=52478