A Weakgeek said:
If Mass Effect was a hardcore RPG with just a cult following, and not a AAA title with EA as a publisher I would be more inclined to agree with you, but the way I believe the industry works ( I believe, you might be expert on the subject and prove me wrong.) a big portion (if not majority) of the people who buy the game are casual gamers, who might have not even played the previous games.
Even though the "outrage" has reached ridiculous levels, you still are the vocal minority of the rough 2.5 million who bought the game. The fans aren't the most important demographic when selling a game, which can be seen from the constant streamlining of the series.
And dude, dont take this as an insult from me to you. I can see you are very passionate about the game. I had this happen to me too, I played KotOR 2.
Well, a couple of things.
First, you need to define "hard core" and "casual" gamers. 2-2.5 million copies sold does not indicate a game has crossed over from being a genre success to a mainstream hit. There's probably never been a more hardcore niche game than Starcraft, and it sold something like 15 million copies. You want to find the "casual gamers", you're going to need to look at sales for things like Farmville and Wii Fit. We're talking tens of millions, not 1-2.
Second, the core "passionate" fan base of any particular property is fairly important even if it's numerically small. They're the ones who buy the collectors editions, they're the ones who order all the DLC, they're the ones who buy all your day 1 preorders before review scores are even in the mail. And most importantly, they're the ones who drive word of mouth and help establish your brand.
Third, and most importantly, you can't ever assume the statistical breakdown of the silent majority. Whether or not a poll of 50,000 that shows 90% of people hated the ending is self selecting, that doesn't mean that everyone who didn't vote in it was satisfied. Most polls use a much smaller sample size, and they're usually pretty damn accurate. Whether that 90% number is actually indicative of all X million people who bought the game or not, you can bet Bioware feels queasy when they look at those numbers. That's the whole reason a dialogue around this exists with them in the first place. This isn't about mollifying an artistically unsatisfied minority, this is about maintaining a good relationship with your customer base. The same reason Valve sometimes gives games away for free, the same reason Amazon will accept returns on opened software. Sometimes, believe it or not, you do need to take a breather on buggering your fan base, or you'll wake up one day and find you no longer have one.
