| Squilliam said: Wii Fit is the better game. I don't see MGS, Gears or KZ2 making you fitter.  |
This is true everybody. There's 2 types of games: game that make you fitter and games that make you fatter.
| Alterego-X said: 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. |
Ever hear the term "follow the crowd"? Humans are highly subject to this concept as social animals. This makes life easier because our brains don't have to process every bit of info that comes our way. However, many people end up unsatisfied with the choices they make because adverts and other peoples opinions hardly ever give us the right info we need to make our own choices.
With that said (using the ps3 only to avoid flames), take a look at a game like Valkyria chronicles, not many have even heard of it not to talk of actually purchasing it. But for the few who have, the satisfaction rate is very high. Compare this to a best selling game like mgs4 (great game IMO) but the satisfaction rate isn't as high. For proof, look at amazon reviews for mgs4 vs VC. Would the sales only automatically make mgs4 a better game? I think satisfaction would be a better metric because it about people appreciating what they paid for.
"Dr. Tenma, according to you, lives are equal. That's why I live today. But you must have realised it by now...the only thing people are equal in is death"---Johann Liebert (MONSTER)
"WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives"---Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler
Because the economy is arguably the most important system we use to allocate the finite resources our society has. Rather a lot of good things flow from getting more resources than the next guy. Survival and growth come to mind.
Cultural influence and good will are valuable resources, too--especially among the elites--but it's hard to compete with the almighty dollar. And good sales will grant you a heaping helping of all three.
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.
The Ghost of RubangB said:
This is true everybody. There's 2 types of games: game that make you fitter and games that make you fatter. |
LOL
| NJ5 said: 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. |
i am getting my games =), so i win.
City17 said:
LOL
|
what about games which make you scream and writhe in pain?
Initiating social expirement #928719281
786_ali said:
what about games which make you scream and writhe in pain?
|
You are not going to derail this thread!
City17 said:
You are not going to derail this thread! |
You sir are derailing the thread. I was just referring to recent games such as WiiFit which have caused people to die.
Initiating social expirement #928719281
WereKitten said:
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?
|
Meercat: I was thinking about instances where reviews and sales results cannot be reconciled. These are cases like Wii-Fit, Mario Kart etc. I don't know whether the reviewers don't take into consideration the values of the audience or perhaps ignore them entirely or the reviewers are taking it upon themselves to be more than prophets of whether or not you should buy the game.
Tease.
^Sorry captain, but I lost you. I don't see how you went from your previous post about sales sort-of-implying quality to this one about reviewers not being in line with sales.
If you're saying that sales hint at qualities that might have escaped from the eyes of the reviewers, I point back to my previous post about examples of reasons that can greatly affect the sales, but that are not themselves a matter of intrinsic game quality.
Before thinking that if biscuit A sells more than biscuit B - when a team of testers found them more or less equal - means that the mass public distinguishes finer nuances of flavour and texture, I'll think of brand, marketing, general public disposition and so on. Occam's razor.
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