I trust word of mouth much more than reviews.

@male roof blower: That thinking made me buy Assassin's Creed, not so wise a choice there...

I base a majority of my game buys on reviews. I hate to say it, but if im going to spend 50+ dollars on a game, i want to know what others think first.

I just go with whatever Gorilla Monsoon tells me.

I miss the Ultimate Warrior :_(

@Iceking5: Word of mouth kept me from buying Assassin's Creed. Everyone I talked to said that the game was repetitive and boring.

Well there really isn't any big suprise there ! The only one is NFS:Pro Street, I thought that serie had stopped selling after Most Wanted !

Well I do have NFS: Carbon but that was a step mom christmas gift ... She was so glad to buy me a game for my new little wii ...

While I think reviews can help and hurt sales of a game, the amount they help or hurt is rather small. I bought Okami pretty much cuz Greg Kasavin sold me on it. Now that's 1 sale more than it would have received, but it still sold pretty poorly.

Anecdotal evidence never accounts to anything, but I still think this idea of mine can become a hasty generalization. Of truth though.

@Kj719: He is an ultra conservative public speaker now for those who don't know.

Leading to the best quote ever of, "queering doesn't make the world go round"

Please see: The entire Wii library.

I choose to go by word-of-mouth like many other people because I usually read reviews and completely disagree with the reviewer. Not only that, but many publications have differing scores. One place may have Devil May Cry 4 as a 9 out of 10 and another may have it as an 8.

The list is actually not that bad. The lowest rated game in the topsellers is 7.2, and that is a NFS title not some Disney shovelware.

Buy this game brother!

Reviews are fine in my book as long as you don't consider them holy. Some people won't go and buy a game if it's in the 70s'ish% or low 80s on Gamesranking. I mean you miss on a lot of great games that way. Assassin's creed ( Which I loved by the way... :p ) got 82%, and even the mighty Ikaruga for gamecube got 85%... I know I was thinking that way before. I was buying the games based solely on the review and was almost never playing a game if it's score was lower than 88% or something ridiculous like that.

Also, the opposite of that which I have seen, is people never checking the reviews and buying BS like Sonic Black because well, they "loved sonic 2!!!"...

Then again there is the other part of the bargain. The one we call the wii. You all know what I mean... :p

Let's do another side-by-side comparison.

Split the review/sales statistics by genre, i.e. first person shooters represented this% of the 90%+ review bracket, this% of the 80%+ review bracket, etc. etc.

Then do a demographic review of the review writers who give games a score of 90%+ and their editorial staff, sorted by gender and age. Put the two side by side.

Then we'll reach another obvious conclusion. The 'summarized-as-a-number' review system is useless and neither predicts or encourages sales of games, good or bad. Catering to the kids who want everything as a fraction of 100% is not a fair way to rate games and is a disservice to the rare underpromoted gem of a game that needs serious championing from the major video game review sites out there.

This completes the picture, I think.

Sure only 3 of the games were from the top 10 reviewed, but none of them were reviewed poorly either.

If you add to that the number of highly ranked games that are appealing to a more niche audience, I think the list follows logic.

The problem is that reviews give much weight to accessibility, in fact, some reviews will ding a game for being too accessible. If a game's accessible, the sales will be much higher, but it won't do much for the score if anything.

shadow of the colossus and okami got some great reviews but was terrible at retail just as an example. if gamers aren't willing to give a game a chance, a great review isn't going to help it.

I always go to the reviews before making a game purchase. I tend not to listen to recommendations from friends, seeing that I know someone that thinks Dynasty Warriors 6 is "awesome."

Dude, the Ultimate Warrior was the absolute fucking shit back in the day! The. Shit.

@Len Bias Cocaine Surplus: What is it with wrestlers becoming preachers nowadays. Ted Dibiase, Shawn Michaels, Ultimate Warrior, and I'm sure many others :oP

Reviews tell you about the quality of the game. Word of mouth is not to be trusted, because hype does stupid things to you, and also fanboyism.

it's good to know that the gaming industry's popularity vs. laudatory patterns doesn't differentiate from that of movies, books or music.

actually, that brings up an interesting point, in that i guess i really am a games snob. while no bad review will stop me from buying a game that i've drank the kool-aid for (Sneak King), i do have a few games bought on pure merit that i haven't even touched yet. meanwhile i own no Oscar-winning films or Nobel-kissed tomes.

Well here's one hypothesis:
I think it depends on how "hardcore" a game is. The more hardcore it is, the more likely the review will have less of an effect on sales.

That is why alot of those high score games aren't on the top sales list. This is also why Wii games tend to sell well despite getting poor reviews.

The other hypothesis we can draw from this list is that no matter what, good games sell the most. Evidence for this can be found in the fact that only one of the top games with the highest sales has a review under an 8. However, this could also be more of a reflection of how ineffectual review scores are.

Well it' pretty much a given that there's always an exception to the rule but it's generally safe to believe that a good review won't hurt game sales while a bad review will. The same way a rocket has to achieve a certain velocity to escape the pull of gravity to send something into orbit, a bad game has to achieve enough hype to break away from the negative reviews to send it into the success. Kane and Lynch I think is an excellent example of this. Is it a bad game? I dunno, never played it... not even the demo but damn those review weren't flattering!

Does any one remember that arcade wrestling game from the early 90's... that was so fun... to bad I don't remember :(

Shouldn't Luke have written this up red-vs-blue style? Don't worry, Luke; I got you...

Loved:
*interesting nonetheless

Hated:
*seven of the games on the top-selling list weren't on the best-reviewed list
*Doesn't really prove anything you don't already know/suspect

All in all, more red than blue. ...you know, if we could colorize our comments.

According to a friend of mine who makes games, sales are based mainly on marketing. What good reviews do is make sequels possible.

I don't know how true this is, but this is his insider's perspective.

@Kj719: I say "Blunt Head Trauma".
BTW, what does the picture have to do with the article?

There are always exceptions to the "rule", but what this really means is that there are few if any absolute standards for a game's quality. Everyone knows that marketing can make up for a whole lot of quality issues, but how to judge a game is ultimately up to the player.

Does this mean that reviews are untrustworthy? Of course not. Professional (or at least knowledgeable) reviewers have the benefit of experience (and dedication) to fairly consider a game, and hopefully influence your purchase decision.

About the only things you can be truly objective about when reviewing a game is if bugs or technical gaffes make it unplayable. Most everything else gets thrown up in the air, particularly for games without a whole lot of differentiation, like sports or racing titles.

props to the hulk hogan/warrior pics.

I buy games like 70% of the time because of reviews. like Shadow of the Colossus. Also I've been buying the smackdown games from WWF Smackdown to SvR2008 because 1) I've been a wrestling fan since the Attitude era and 2) because of reviews(which is why I didn't bother renting the raw games on xbox)

@ enigma89: great point. many reviewers i just simply don't trust. some reviewers will rip a game for having a bad framerate and bad animation...lowering the score as a result. but will then give a high profile game a great review even though it has the exact same issues. we were talking about this earlier today. then you have the 'flavor of the month' mentality. this is when too many people condemn a game for not playing like the current 'flavor'

example- CoD4/R6 vegas2.

there are people that won't play r6 vegas2 because it doesn't play like CoD4 regardless of a great review. but if r6 played like CoD4, it wouldn't be r6, not very logical. variety....truly is the spice of life. word of mouth from a trusted reliable, knowledgeable source will always be better than any review.

I just think it's a crying shame how far down the list Orange Box is. On the bright side though, TF2 isn't infested with the usual Xbox Live Idiots(tm).

@Striderhayasa - Phillyyakk on PSN and Live.: Shadow of the Colossus did very good in terms of sales.

@Kj719: me too. PS. I've met Bret Hart :P

@Kj719: well Shawn Michaels is WWE's holy man as he prays almost always before the pyro goes off.(born-again christian)

@Striderhayasa - Phillyyakk on PSN and Live.: Look at Mass Effect, the performance issues in that game are pretty harsh, but at the end of the game, it just doesn't matter, if you want me to play a mediocre experiance with the same issues, then it becomes a serious problem.

@okenny :): like for actual Arcades? WWF No Mercy was my favorite till Here Comes The Pain came out.

@ Ashurahori: a guy asked me to rate the current consoles to help him decide which to get. i told him to buy the 360 and broke down the details. he assumed that was my console of choice. i told him it wasn't, i hated it and preferred the ps3. he asked why did i tell him to get a 360 if i don't like it. i explained that the 360 works for him because of the library. it fits his taste. 360 doesn't work for me and i gave him some reasons why. he understood at that point and bought the 360.
that's an honest answer/review taking another person's taste into consideration for a sale regardless of my preference. the staff at gamestop were no help, giving him the usual fanboy nonsense but couldn't answer basic questions when comparing the 360 and ps3. too many reviewers come off like the retail monkeys at that gamestop. fanboys that like to drink the koolaide and can't give a rational, sensible review.

i prefer word of mouth from a rational, sensible knowledgeable source for that reason.

@male roof blower: Agreed. While this article is interesting food for thought, one of the author's conclusions I find to be totally wrong; his premise that people still buy sequels of commons IP's over interesting, fresh ones. Granted an untested IP has a bit of a burden of proof ("Let's see if you're any good!") while the sequels and spin-offs have the other game's pedigree behind them, I think most people buy these games because, frankly, that's about all there is out there. Okami and Shadow of the Colossus were great games, but they were only two. How can you really compare the sales of those two games to juggernauts like Halo, Half-Life, CoD, and so on? In other words, it's an inadequate sample.

@Highlander Wolf: Wrestlers are known for "selling" themselves, ie. the pain, the glory and all that. Some may call it acting, but that's a whole other can of worms.

But in relation to the article at hand, I will want to buy games based on develops and/or directors, Team Ico perfect example. Or if a game's on sale I may get it. Reviews let me know if I should rent it to see for myself.

Uh, this is pretty much the best (read: most ridiculous) wrestling promo of the 90's, and it was during the build-up to the match used in this photo:

+ Watch video

@ Iceking5: check my last post....it comes down to taste. Mass Effect might be great to you regardless of said issues, but that a dealbreaker for me. for all intents Mass Effect is mediocre to me because i have no desire to buy it because of the issues. Same for GTA:SA, Oblivion and a few other popular games that people were pimping as teh grEatezt eVaR! but had glaring flaws. case in point...a fps that's on ps3 and 360....i'm buying the ps3 version provided it's not busted. ps3 has splitfish support and m/kb in UT3. on 360 i'm a slave to less skillful auto-aim and dual analog clumsiness. this doesn't matter to many people, but it matters to me regardless of whether my choice is popular or not. you have to do what works for you.

I tend to buy my video games on old systems at big discounts. So I'll buy an Xbox 360 in 2010 or so and pay $150 for it. All of the great games will be obvious at that point, and they'll be new to me.

I bought a GameCube for cheap in the summer of 2006, and picked up a handful of A+ games for less than $15 each. I feel like it was a pretty good investment to go that way, and helps separate the wheat from the chafe.

And, by the way, there is no type of story that cannot in some way be represented by iconic moments in professional wrestling.

@ Luna: it did? i read otherwise. link?

Haven't the huge-budget games already proven the fact that brand image and huge advertising campaigns are what sells games?

For those games without that kind of a budget, yeah... the demographic that reads reviews will end up being a little more important.

I can't believe everyone didn't buy La Boite Orange. I bought it just for Portal, but I finally started Half Life 2, and having never really be enamored with any FPS, I'm completely enamored with this one. I can't believe I got this AND Portal, and two more HLs for the price of one game.

@Kj719: same here buddy.