Over the last few months here on N4G, we have been hearing a few phrases repeated over and over - "sales don't matter", "sales don't equal quality", and "you can't play sales". These "sales" arguements have been mainly confined to the last three months or so. It's not too hard to figure out why, but I'll leave it up to each person to come up with their own reasons. However, I believe that sales numbers are very important, and I'll give you my reasons why.
Let's start by looking at a few successful franchises. Gran Turismo debuted on the PS1, and was an immediate success, eventually selling around 10 million copies. But, what if it sold only 250,000 copies? Would that have changed the quality of the game? No - it would still be a masterpiece. Sales have NO effect on the quality of the game. However, if it sold only 250,000 copies, we probably would not be talking about GT5 today. A quarter million copies probably wouldn't have even made enough money to recoup the development costs, let alone make a profit that would warrant a sequel.
The same could be said about Halo. If it sold half a million instead of 8 million, there would most likely be no Halo 2 - and probably no Xbox 360. Yet, the game's quality would still be the same. God of War, Final Fantasy, Forza, Tekken - the list goes on and on. Gamers should be extremely interested in sales because it provides developers the revenue to keep franchises alive, and to keep making more games.
It is absolutely true that sales do not equal quality. It is also true that you can't play sales numbers. But, if it weren't for sales, you wouldn't have much to play at all.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
As yes sales do determine if a game gets a sequel or not. But people are not saying they don't matter per say. They usually and only say it when people use sales to measure how good a game is when its entirely not the case.
Also I don't think we can determine if a game is successful or not depending on its sale as we don't know how much most games cost to make and advertise. So yeah a quarter mil sales may not be good for a huge budget game but thats pretty good for low budget games. Thats pure profit most likely so its up to the devs and the publishers and not us gamers to determine if a game is a flop or a bad choice or decision as it affects them directly way more than us gamers. If a game flops we just don't play it or waste 60 bucks on it. If a game flops for a dev that could be some people lose their jobs or the company shuts down so meh....
You also have to add in who the specific game is aimed at. Halo and Gran Turismo were aimed at a wide audience, both core and casual gamers. And they both succeeded with selling to these gamer demographics.
Games like Ico, Katamari Damacy or Okami are all great games but probably didn't aim to sell the same quantities since they appeal to a niche demographic of gamers. So it makes no sense to say Halo is better than these games cause it sold more copies.
What makes one game better than the other comes down to personal taste, which is not measurable in any objective way. One thing you can measure though is the success of games that compete for the same audience. Like Killzone 2 and Halo 3 for instance. Or Forza and Gran Turismo.
We can't say that Halo 3 is better than Killzone 2, or GT better than Forza. But we can say that one has been more succesful than the other so far.
"Gamers should be extremely interested in sales because it provides developers the revenue to keep franchises alive, and to keep making more games" - Great words.
Yet you still hear...you can't play sales! Quality >>>>> Sales!!1
true sales are important in the gaming industry BUT i dont see why fanboys n some real gamers care bout sales so much unless they got stocks in any of the companys lol it shouldnt really matter to them only that the quality games keep comin not how many they sold its pointless imo
just commenting on your tag we won the world series in 2005 chisox not bosox......but back to the biz sales does play at least 85% but also a good positive feedback from us, well plays a key role too........take NFL Street 1 and 2 it sold soment in the mills i know for sure then when NFL Tour came around on the 360 EA expected to sell almost the same number and what it do flop out of this world bad feedback= bad sales