speculawyer said:
So I see that you also have no substantive input on the matter. Thanks for enlightening us.
Actually my input was to point out that your argument in favour of this probability of GTA:CW getting good sales was based on a flawed premise, but if you wish me to go into more detail, I can. Here:
Using reviews as a determinant for the expectations of a game's performance on the market simply does not work for what I believe can be summed up in two primary reasons:
1st: What the reviewer likes is not necessarily what the mass market consumer likes (and vice versa). The reviewers may have loved GTA:CW, but the average consumer might be turned off by the top-down style of gameplay, or the DS graphics, or the (insert perceived fault here).
This is because the reviewer is, most of the time, an enthusiast of the hobby, as opposed to people who play casually. In times where their interests accord (say, FPSes?), high reviews have a greater tendency to correlate with high sales. Where it doesn't, it tends to veer off more.
Examples? Sure - As we've seen, GTA:CW scored high and performed disappointingly. Wii Sports scored average and is a sales phenomenon.
Of course, it's still not a very good determinant even when tastes accord, due to reason 2:
Awareness of the game - people can't buy the game if they don't know about the game. And unless the game is so face-meltingly awesome (in the eyes of the mass-market consumer) that they run around telling their friends about it and buying it for their friends or whatever, all the 10/10s in the world mean jack if the game isn't marketed.
(Above arguments are made on the assumption that reviews serve primarily as a determinant of how much the reviewer liked the game and not how much coverage the site/magazine received about the game.)