Metacritic: High Score Alone Doesn't Equal High Sales

[the Dept of Science]

While things like Metacritic are far from perfect, I think its a shame more people don't pay attention to it. The great thing I like about Metacritic is that it takes all the marketing, trailers and preconceived notion about it and gives you a generally quite clear cut "yay or nay", based on things that you couldn't possibly know before playing the game. That way, on Metacritic a good indie game like World of Goo or Braid will get the same seal of approval as, say, Mass Effect 2 or Bioshock.

While this probably doesn't make a massive difference to the AAA titles, I'm guessing it does bring needed attention to some of the more obscure indie titles.

Nobody goes to metacritic to look up the score for a game they have never heard of.

On the other hand I'm sure I'm not unique by going on Metacritic, going "sort x by metascore" and investigating any particularly highly scored games.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Bikini zombie slayers!?

I don't care about the score that sounds awsome.

Yea.
If only it was as awesome as it sounds. Still, worth a rental (just to see how bad it is) but you probably wont want to play through the whole thing.

While I?m sure marketing/hype has more to do with sales than quality, you can?t overlook the fact that reviewers have horrible taste. Even Yahtzee. Some of the games they give high scores to... It just doesn?t make any sense.
I never read/watch a review looking for a score or opinion anyway. I prefer to rent it and find out for myself.

 

[WaderiAAA]

This is so true. Just look at Okami! Here is a quote from Okami's wikipedia page:

Total sales for the game remained under 600,000 total units by March 2009, and was named the "least commercially successful winner of a game of the year award" in the 2010 version of the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition.