Sales, not Reviews, determines product success

What is the quality of a video game product? Like any other product, it is the job it performs. Best selling products become so because they perform jobs customers need them to do.

Game journalists and hardcore fans are obsessed over game sales precisely because they know it is what really counts. Deep down, I think everyone realizes that sales really means the product is PLEASING the most people. After all, people do not buy games they do not want. The market is the authority. When a game sells or doesn’t sell, you do not condemn the market. The market is always, always right.

While the game industry is quickly realizing the fact that games perform jobs, hardcore are way behind and are in an alternate universe. In their universe, they believe quality of the product is defined BY THEM and THEIR REVIEWS. Yes, it is an arrogant view but what else are we to expect from them? The only reason why The Cult has been obsessed about Boom Blox is because it is a game they enjoy playing. If they did not enjoy it, we wouldn’t have heard a word about it in the same way we don’t hear words about ‘Carnival Games’ except how it, too, is destroying ‘all gaming’.

More and more ink is being spilled on ‘Boom Blox’ and its ‘failure’. This time, it is from Joystiq. All the ‘Boom Blox’ obsessive criticisms are following the same exact pattern:

First, Hardcore gamers play it and like it. It gets good reviews.

Second, based solely that hardcore enjoy it, they think that *alone* determines the product’s success.

Third, if the game doesn’t meet some sort of sales number, one that the hardcore make up on their own, it means the problem is with the Wii, with Nintendo, with the Wii gamers, and NOT with ‘Boom Blox’.

What is fun is that we can watch this pattern get reversed as well. Let us use ‘Carnival Games’.

First, hardcore play ‘Carnival Games’ and hates it. It gets poor scores.

Second, based solely that hardcore did not enjoy ‘Carnival Games’, they determine it is a *bad* product.

Third, when ‘Carnival Games’ sells very well, they think bad products are selling well. They blame the Wii, the new gamers (who they arrogantly call ‘casual gamers’), and run around saying all gaming is ending.

Let me use another industry that I hope can illuminate this issue more.

The book industry is very similar to the games industry in many ways. Most writers think sales, marketing, and all that *business stuff* is just beneath them. They, they believe, are ARTISTS. And ARTISTS don’t have to worry about that stuff. In fact, ARTISTS are *above* that stuff. (Journalists also believe they are above business. When CBS’s News Division was so far in the red and the company head was attempting to fix it, Dan Rather marched into his office and told him that news and journalism was ‘above’ business concerns. Look how NY Times and TV news keeps declining and declining yet they are too stubborn to change their ways. They feel they are ‘above it’.)

Anyways, there is no such thing as a ‘best written list’. It is always the ‘best selling list’. You have to write a book people want to read. And you have to know how to sell and market your book. If your book doesn’t sell, you can insult the market all you want, but the hard truth is that sales, not reviews and opinions, determines product success.

The key word is ‘product’. Of course, sales does not determine what is success for ‘art’, only products. You can make art all you want, but don’t cry when it doesn’t sell because you were too arrogant to not treat your ‘art’ as a product. The reason why most writers fail is because they believe they are making art instead of products. And they think the more ‘artsy’ they make their book, the more it will sell. But that is not how that works at all.

It is quite common for poor writers to become best selling authors. The reason why is because they treat their books as products. They don’t care about ‘reviews’ as they do about sales.

Someone might say, “So you are saying that Britney Spears albums selling more than Beethoven means Britney Spears albums are superior?” The pop culture albums are a more successful product. It obviously pleases more people than Beethoven music is doing currently. But no one would call Britney Spears a better artist. Beethoven will still be selling hundreds of years from now. I don’t think anyone gives a care about Spears albums even today.

Now back to this Joystiq piece. I’m going to bite my tongue on this one. What do I disagree with it? Everything. Looking through other ‘pieces’ by the same authors, I am shaking my head. It is like a collection of stereotypes and internet memes all rolled into one. In this article, we read:

I suggested that, if Microsoft is to make a Wii-like controller, it should still continue to focus on the “traditional” types of games that have so far made the 360 a success, because Nintendo had already basically wrapped up the “casual” crowd.

Someone is going to be disappointed.

…while Nintendo may be expanding the audience that it can sell the Wii to with casual games like Wii Sports, it’s failing to expand that same audience into other franchises that may represent more traditional genres.

This statement was made for the second NPD showing Smash Brother Brawl’s sales. It is sensationalist and doesn’t even resemble anything objective. You cannot take one game, and one month, and make declarations on a console strategy. If it was MANY games over MANY months, maybe.

It is also simply WRONG. Smash Brothers Brawl is selling better than Melee did at a similar time period. Melee became the best selling Gamecube game based on long term sales. At the current rate, Brawl is outselling Melee. Mario Galaxy is outselling Sunshine. Mario Kart Wii is outselling Double Dash. Even Twilight Princess outsold Wind Waker worldwide. So what does this mean? Will anyone entertain the thoughts of upstreaming? No. Instead, the goal posts will be re-arranged and people will say, “People only buy Nintendo games!” and then cherry pick another game to start the process all over again.

For as much as Nintendo was touting its “Blue Ocean” strategy for the Wii, it sure doesn’t look like much has changed. Of the Gamecube top sellers, all ten were published by Nintendo. Of the top-selling Wii-games, eight are Nintendo published, one is both arguably a Nintendo game and a “franchise” game (Mario & Sonic, since it includes the two company mascots), and the other is a well-established franchise (Guitar Hero III). Granted, some of the Nintendo games are focused on this new “casual” crowd as well, but what this suggests is simply an augmentation of its Gamecube strategy and not necessarily a completely new direction as “Blue Ocean” would suggest.

The authors have shown no indication they even know what the ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ is. And they are comparing a lifetime of sales of Gamecube to over a year sales of Wii. And they are forgetting something very, very important: Nintendo sees its job to push out the installed base, to drive momentum in the early years. After a couple of years, it lets the third parties take over as there is now a large installed base waiting there. Third parties do not take responsibility or the risk to drive out a console’s installed based. For evidence, look at Square-Enix who keeps delaying FF13 for this very reason. Why should they take the hit if the installed base isn’t there yet?

The authors do not examine the DS which the ‘Blue Ocean’ was used and has a longer history than Wii does.

It goes on, and on, and on into more, well, nonsense.

Why is it so hard to get any decent business analysis in this industry? At best, we get swarmy articles that say, “This bar is larger than that bar by 15% indicating that…” to “Wii sells because of the ‘casual market’! LOL!”

I know I risk sounding peeved and a broken record on this subject with these posts. But it is extremely disheartening to see people have the key to the riddle, the Blue Ocean Strategy or even disruption, and they either refuse or are unable to read it and comprehend it.