Email: Do you really believe better sales means better quality?

That’s something that I always wanted to ask yourself, after comparing yourself to Michael Jackson and saying that because he’s a better singer, he sold a lot more than you, well, I think that this comparison is somewhat short sighted.
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You can’t compare one of the best singers of all time, who brought a revolution to the music industry, to someone who doesn’t write music.
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How about comparing Queen and The Beatles? Can you literally say that the Beatles are, objectively, a “better quality” band than Queen, just because they sold more? That doesn’t take into account things like influence, who was earlier (who says that if Queen came before the Beatles they wouldn’t have sold more?)

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And what about cases like The Backstreet boys? They sold a TON of albums back in the day, Millenium is among the top 5 best selling albums ever, but they stopped selling, how could that be, if their “quality” is so good? Better, according to you, than bands like Iron Maiden, who still goes on tours and preform in front of millions of pepole, sell millions of albums every year, yet, their grand total of albums sold is less than The Backstreet Boys?
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And what about taking into account different genres, does the fact that some genres are more accessible, make the genres themselves “better”? Is Rap better than Classical music because it sells more?
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Is Elvis a better singer than Michael Jackson? Is Michael Jackson a better singer than Freddie Mercury? Is Mercury a better singer than Pavarotti?
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You are equating quality to mean ‘art’ which is not what quality means.
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Who should define quality of a video game?

Should it be the game journalist?

Should it be the retailer?

How about the Pope?

What about a politician?

The answer is that the people decide what is the quality of a product. We know it has value because people give something they have of value to get it (their money). If they didn’t value it, people wouldn’t be paying for it.

The Wii outsold the PlayStation 3. Does this mean the Wii is a better quality product than the PS3? The answer is yes. The Wii is performing a job the customers want in a much better way than the PS3. “But the PS3 is better technology and has better engineering and costs much more.” That isn’t better quality, that is called incompetence.

The only thing that matters is the job the product performs. Customers hire products to perform jobs for them. We hire the toilet plunger to unplug our sink. We hire the loaf of bread to fill our stomach. We hire the video game to entertain us.

Things are only ‘art’ if they are still being looked at at least a hundred years since the product was released. Since we aren’t going to live that long, the ‘art’ question shouldn’t matter with current products. How often do you care about products that came out a hundred years ago? There you go. 99.9% of products released today will be forgotten a hundred years from now.

I wonder why this issue is so difficult for people to accept. I think much of it has to do with the issue of context. They may read business information, but they haven’t re-wired their brains to think in such a way.

I am deeply offended that you think I cannot sing well. How do you know that I am a worse singer than Michael Jackson? You don’t know. I could very well be a better singer. I could be a better dancer as well.

How do you know that Michael Jackson is a good singer and Sean Malstrom is not? The answer is that people were willing to pay money to listen to Michael Jackson. So far, no one has paid money to listen to Sean Malstrom sing.

Many people erroneously refer to ‘quality’ as some Platonic ideal that floats in the void. But quality does not exist in that way.

Once upon a time, it was said that quality of a play meant that the play followed the Greek concept of real-time daytime in the play. A playwright was heavily criticized for not following this Greek ideal (and so his plays could not be considered quality. He was called an ‘upstart crow). The playwright’s name was Shakespeare.

More recently, it was said that novels had to follow European standards if they were to be of any quality. American novelists imitated European standards for the novel. But one author decided not to follow these European standards and followed his own voice which very much ended up defining American literature. The author’s name was Mark Twain.

In both those examples, sales re-defined quality. Popularity defined quality.

Once upon a time, video games were said to be ‘poor quality’. When young Iwata went to work at HAL, it is said his parents were not too happy. Perhaps they thought he was throwing his life away. What changed? How did video games go from being considered junk to being something of great value?

It is the sales. Video games sell in massive numbers. It is sales that define quality, because sales are votes of the people and it is people who define quality. Pretty much everything considered ‘quality’ got that way because of good sales. Even if a work was unknown at one time but sells a hundred years later, that again points to sales.

Does pop music outselling classical music mean that pop music is of higher quality? Of course it does. Pop music PLEASES people more. The purpose of a product is not to appeal to dead people but to living people, not to ideals in the sky but of current problems on the Earth.

Once upon a time, video games were considered hideous things compared to books and music and other things. Video games were considered of ‘no quality’. What changed all this? Sales of video games. It pointed out that people did value it.

It doesn’t bother me if someone refuses to accept this. They will just spend their lives making products no one wants to buy. More room for me to succeed.