Oh, I guess your fantastic proof proved us wrong here. Of course you're correct.

Wii Fit is the better game. I don't see MGS, Gears or KZ2 making you fitter.

Squilliam said: Wii Fit is the better game. I don't see MGS, Gears or KZ2 making you fitter.

assasins creed is a better game than mass effect imo.

if i was gonna make my mind up which to buy, i would choose assasins creed. it must be a better game because it sold more.

Skeeuk said: Squilliam said: Wii Fit is the better game. I don't see MGS, Gears or KZ2 making you fitter. assasins creed is a better game than mass effect imo. if i was gonna make my mind up which to buy, i would choose assasins creed. it must be a better game because it sold more.

Nope, not the same genre.

Not really. That's only true if you 1) trust the mainstream opinion to be indicative of your own tastes, and if you 2) trust the sales for those games to be strictly related to an informed opinion by the buyers at large. Let me clarify both:

1) let's say we have two hack and slash games, and let's say they are reviewed more or else equally. Let's also say that I love really hard and punishing hack/slash games in the style of Ninja Gaiden, that I find rewarding dedicating countless hours into getting better into such game. I can assume that the better sales will go to the less extreme experience, and as such it would be further from my personal tastes.

2) let's say that two FPS are reviewed more or less equally. But one is marketed to death on all tv channels and at every street corner and with every happy meal. The other is the first work of a small hungarian studio. Let's say the former sells 50% more than the latter. Would you really infer a better quality of the first game by the sales?

Let's also say that by "All else remaining relatively equal as well" you also cover fairly equal marketing - very hard to estabilish, and hardly taken in account on this site when looking at the naked numbers. There might be other reasons for which one has more mainstream success: it could have a theme/setting that is less disturbing for the target demographic. It could have a more generally likeable art style.

In all these cases one game would be discarded even before being examined, and as such the sales don't even reflect an informed opinion on the content of the game. Would you trust sales to gauge the quality of a game that you know delves deep into, I don't know, existentialism? Would you trust the low sales in NA of an adventure game from the point of view of an Iraqi Republican Guard soldier?

This is a great post. Kudos WereKitten.

There are many great answers in here!

Squilliam said: "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...

Well, I guess these are pretty common observations on a sales site...  

Money made is a better way of looking at things, but I think looking at sales trends is more interesting

PS3 seems to be the most popular, most of the news about gaming always is about the PS3 (even though most of it is bad news).