Fixed. Once again, it's a prediction not a fact.

I never said they moneyhatted anything.  That was pretty much the Jest of your argument.

I said they paid millions upon millions for the amount of advertising.  And GT5 wont?

And no, not everyone gets "cultural icon" status from paying for it.  Now days advertising is the biggest factor.

@pbroy, show me some killzone coke can? Like i highlighted.  KZ2 will never be a Cultural Icon so you wont see one.

Ok, I have bolded the areas of your argument that are faulty.  First of all, games like halo and gran turismo don't adhere to this 40% first week rule.  Halo 3 will probably end up selling at least 11 to 12 million and it sole 3 million the first week.  The big games out their keep selling as people buy into the system.  So as more people buy 360's, the number of halo 3's sold will keep going up.  Also, review scores can have an effect on game sales, ever heard of bioshock?  Game got perfect reviews, but when it hit stores it hit in small amounts because retailers weren't expecting a big demand for it.  I work at best buy and I remember there being an internal memo about how the unexpected review scores had increased demand and they were doing all they could to get more copies.  Also, look at too human, reviewed terribly, but it was one of those high anticpated exclusives but the sells didn't pan out because it got such terrible reviews. 

What surveys are you talking about, I have never heard of any.  I also remember there being a lot of talk of people being dissapointed with the game when it came out.  I think the lower review score speaks for itself here, you are just trying to throw your opinion in as fact.  Same with Majora's mask, I don't know a single person that likes majora's mask better than OoT.

FF7 and FFX never stopped selling, so they actually had the Same install bases as XII, or at least X does.  In fact, I can go into best buy right now and go buy FFX.  So it just boils down to which game is better.  Also X has benefited from quite a bit more years in the budget price range.

Thank you for making my point.  MGS3 had no advertising, which equates to lower sales.  Which makes your whole point of using them as examples moot.  Gran Turismo games have always been heavily marketed, which is one of the factors to their incredble sales, same with halo.

As far as the install base, I'm curious how you gather that the core audience actually decreases when the number of systems increases.  Do they all just throw their ps2's away when somebody else goes and buys a new system? 

Ok, the fact of the matter, by having a larger install base you are increasing the chances of growing the core audience.  Say 1 out of 10 gamers in america like FPS games.  Every 10th person that buys a 360 or ps3 grows that core audience.  New people that buy systems have game preferences just like everybody else.  What you are basically saying is after the first 15 million game systems sold, the number of games that sells will always stay the same, because install base doesn't matter.  So why do they even still sell the ps3?  Lets just get rid of the hardware because the games are where all the profit is anyway.  They are going to selling the same number of games anyway, so why sell new ps3's? 

Such a stupid argument. 

That's pretty subjective, AND far fetched. Kratos is widly known by gamers along with the newly acquired Sackboy. What about Ratchet and Clank, Jak & Daxter?....You get my point, they've got main, known characters just like every other company. They may not be as popular as say Mario or Master Chief, but they are there and known.

40% of a games LTD is sold within the first week. A factor which is still current today, only thing changing that is things like WII fit. (Bundles don't count of course). 95% are sold within the first 2 months. Review scores do not equal sales, and surveys and general acceptance is MGS3 was the best. Personally I like 4 better, but whatever. MGS3 was far better then 2, review scores change per game. If you release a game, and it scores 95, I am 100% sure if you release a game which is the same it'll score lower. But why? Even if it's better it'll score lower.... But why...? People get used to it. MGS2 was groundbreaking, then MGS3 comes along, it did everything better but didn't have the impact.

Majoras Mask is a clear example of it. It is better then OoT(Though both are beaten by link to a past) but majoras is seen to be less of an impact. But why? OoT was the first jump to 3d, majoras mask just seemed less because of that.

People say goldeneye 64 is the best FPS of all time. Yet if you give it to someone who never played it before and started playing FPS now, they would probably say it's bad. Is it bad? Yes and no. Things age, and get worse with age as other games do things better, and even games that do it better may not be seen to be better in conparison.

FF is a good ideal. FF7 and 10 sold around the same. They both released on a console with not a large install base. FF12 and 10 have the same metacritic review, yet 12 sold 3 million less, on a much larger install base.

Install base means nothing. 2 things are what gets sales. Advertising, and core genre audience. No advertising, piss poor sales, no matter the game. Core genre audience refers to the actual number of people who enjoy said genre in that console userbase, and normally stays the same number throughout, in fact in most cases decreases, not increases.(People adopting or dropping). If you have 40 million people who have the console, yet only say 5 million actually like the RPG genre, if you sell 1 million, people would see that as only 2.5% buying the game. Is that fair to say, or is it fair to say 20% of people who are into those games bought it. Both are wrong, however it's something to thing about. Not that only people in that core audience are going to buy that type of game, but majority, around 90% comes from them, others are from people who want to try something new.

That's pretty subjective, AND far fetched. Kratos is widly known by gamers along with the newly acquired Sackboy. What about Ratchet and Clank, Jak & Daxter?....You get my point, they've got main, known characters just like every other company. They may not be as popular as say Mario or Master Chief, but they are there and known.