No.

The only way it could be an indicator of quality is if every person buying the game also bought every other game, played all of them, returned the ones they didn't like, and kept the ones they did.

Short of that, I don't see how anyone could think that the sales of a game has anything to do with how good it is.

Hell no, mass popularity never means certain quality. Just look at the wii most of what comes out of it is crap, yet its still selling out all the time. Before to many people get mad notice I wrote that most of it was crap not all. Peace!!!

NO! ... if halo can sell so many copies, that is a clear indicator that high sales does NOT = high quality ....

Example: Shenmue - bliss - poor sales ...

Also look at the wii ... enough said

Business-wise, it somewhat does. A game that sells more has the potential to make more profit. (Other factors, such as cost, obviously aren't factored yet.) However for an actual end-user product, no. The best quality games come from Atlus, and they're not exactly known for sales.

Fail. Halo had graphics that far exceeded anything else that was out at the time, the gameplay was amazing, and overall it had a greater amount of quality than most of the other games available. 

Didn't Lair sell a million?

For the Wii no. That's an audience that appears to stick with familiarity or what appears to offer the most value (i.e. games with lots of games).

For the HD consoles, yes. I've play a ton of games this gen and my favorites happen to be top sellers. Sometimes quality games appear to go unnoticed, but each title should be debated why that happen.

Now I'm a person that loves Shenmue and Halo. I've played every Shenmue and Halo.

Halo is a fantastic shooter with some of the best campaigns available in the FPS genre. And ofcourse the multiplayer experience is almost perfection. Love it or not, its an experience any FPS fan can enjoy at some level and split screen online play is great for parties.

Shenmue on the otherhand. For what its worth Shenmue 1 sold pretty well, sold just over a million on a console that had a userbase of 10 million. Unfortunately Sega pissed away $70 million. No way they were going to make that money back unless it sold like 3 million copes. That's the kind of money Sony risks with their mega budget games today. Nobody spent that kind of money 10 years ago.

Shenmue 2 was a far better game. Better gameplay, story, and MS purchased the exclusivity for the Xbox. Unfortunately the Xbox wasn't popular in Japan and the game sort of faded into obscurity. Shenmue never had a chance to reach the masses in my opinion. Maybe things would have been different if Sega originally brought it to the PS2.

Basically I'm saying, Halo was released to a large audience that can appreciate it while Shenmue never really had that chance.

absolutely not. There are tons of games out there that get poor sales but end up being amazing and most times even better than games that do sell a lot.

Not at all. Sales are just an indicator of an popular item.