Carnival Games is in fact a better game than Okami. Really.

lolz

I agree, I was just pointing out that you were wrong on the sales.

sales are not important it all depends on the marketing if you aske me, games like shadow of the colussus and Ico havent really sold that well but are up their with the greats.

usually sales numbers indicate a good game- usually, not always.

nintendo and casual games tend to be an exception to this rule. Straight out shooter vs straight out shooter- there's little room for denial.

Agreed.  If anything, the higher the quality the game, the less it appeals to the mainstream because it's too "complicated" or too "artistic".  Just like with movies, the movies that win Best Picture every year is usually not summer blockbusters, but artistic films that most people have never seen.  Or with cars, just because Toyota and Honda sell more cars every year, it doesn't mean their cars are of higher quality than a Ferrari. 

I have to disagree. 

While it is impossible to perfectly determine a game's objective quality, sales might be the closest we might get to it. 

You say Wii Music is "mediocre" and Boom Box is "outstanding". What is your proof for that? Your personal taste. Preference. Opinion. Subjectivity. This is of course important, when you want enjoy a game for yourself. But not when you want to defend its objective "quality".

Look at it from an outsider, unbiased point of view:

Some guy tells a joke. No one laughs.

A second guy tells another joke. A girl laughs loudly, and some others are smiling.

A third guy tells a third joke. The crowd erupts in laughter, they tell it to everyone they know, someone writes it on the Internet, and it becomes a famous meme. 

Which joke was the funniest? Of course the one that the entire planet found funny. After all, we, the overall population, define the terms, decide what words mean. 

Of course, in case of gaming, there are some factors that make it less clear. For example, obviously different genres have different standard. The best ice cream doesn't have "more quality" than the best movie, it is apples to oranges. 

Also, "sales" doesn't directly mean "popularity", because marketing, and some other things might manipulate that somehow.

But we can still safely say that no random fad, or powerful marketing could sell millions of copies of anything that everyone hates, and if a games is appealing to the masses, it will find its way.

You ever played Wii Music?

I thought not. So shut up