Read my sig.

Using sales number is a good way of turning subjective preference into an almost fully objective scale of OVERALL PREFERENCE, a.k.a. the most popular sells the best, and the most popular is considered the "best" by most people.

Alterego's quote has the right idea. Obviously a product being a commercial success doesn't inherently give it value, or make it good, yet at the same time it must be doing something right to attract so much interest from the public. And it really is just about the only objective way to measure success that we have. You might look at me funny if I insist that Superman 64 is the greatest game of all time, but ultimately that's my opinion, and any attempts to disagree really are subjective in nature, thus unproovable.

I also believe that people are not idiots, and have a good idea of what they want. You will hear a lot of people condemn anything that becomes popular as faddish or part of a herd mentality, but I think that's being too cynical, and giving folks too little credit. Especially since most peope who say such things are inherent elitists who believe they should be the arbiter of quality for everyone else.

"Sales does not equal quality, but it is still closer to it than any other rating, based on one or a few subjective opinions that might not represent the game's universal appeal."

Sounds like something I said, or like something I said...

Anyway I like sales because its a non-elitist way of judging a games appeal. Its a good balance to reviews as often-times games are judged too harshly or too easily and its a good counter-balance to that.

like Konewicki said sales are fact , the cannot be disputed or doughted , they aren't influenced or skewed by human opinion. That's why some might argue that they are a much better method of gaugin a games quality than opinion.

The problem is when you use factual information to proove something unrelated to that fact you still end up in the trap of subjectivity "Game X has 3 X the sales than game Y therfore it is a better game" , there is no direct correlation between sales and quality , there is however some sort of correlation between the apeal of a game and it's sales (but lack of martketing & promotion can get in the way of this) so some one who wanted to argue that X game had more apeal than Y game might be correct in using sales figures as an absoloute standard ( but like I said there are problems with that ) , this still doesn't proove what game is better.

The inconvenient truth is that there is no definitive way to compare the quality of a game , we can't apeal to common sense because game X will never be logicaly better than game Y , we play games for entertainment and entertainment cannot be quantifiably ( numbers ) measured. But factors like the console wars , buyers remorse , fanboys etc bring about the need to compare entertainment

ive never claimed that game A is a better game than game B simply because of its sales.

im talking about ppl on here who use sales to determine which game is better.

Can you give me a link to such a statement?

I've heard some people say something ala "Game A has sold more than game B. By this standard, game A is better than game B, and it's the best way of measuring we have".

If one game better than another = matter of personal opinion. Ratings = all critics opinions put together. Sales = all opinions put together. But you may still disagree with majority, if you like.

If Game A/B have ~ = Reviews (Having never played the game) the only recourse is to assume the one that sold the more might be the better game. (All else remaining relatively equal as well)

LOL???? Wii fit 18m sold = better than Gears, MGS, KZ2

Seriously??? Wii fit > Gears, MGS , KZ2???

Seriously?? are you serious??? nah nah nah seriously?

There are other kinds of victories, such as profit and performance vs expectations.

It just happens that the winning order doesn't change when using those metrics... Nintendo still wins by far, and Sony has the biggest failure of this gen whether using profits, sales or judging what happened against expectations.