Marketing is more important than review scores
Research firm believes it's a myth that high scores lead to high sales.
Did GTA4 sell well because of critical acclaim or a multi-million dollar marketing campaign?
These days it's rare to read an interview with a high ranking games industry exec without Metacritic scores cropping up at least once, yet according to research carried out by EEDAR these review scores may not be as valuable as previously believed.
EEDAR's Jesse Divnich, speaking at the Montreal International Game Summit, revealed that the latest research indicates that marketing has a much greater influence on a game's sales than review scores.
"You can make the greatest game and it won't even matter. I know that's discouraging to developers at first but it's very true," Divnich told the MIGS audience.
"Marketing influences game revenue three times more than quality scores. There's a giant myth out there that reviews scores are the most crucial to a video game. The reason why that is is the information is readily available - we can go to Metacritic - and we see games like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty succeed and we see they have a high quality score and we make that correlation. But the truth is, marketing actually has much more of an influence to game sales than high scores."
According to Divnich, developers working on titles for the Nintendo DS might as well "sacrifice quality to get a higher marketing budget".
"This basically means that review scores for the Nintendo DS don't matter. If you're making a DS game don't even bother on quality, just ask for a bunch of marketing dollars," explained Divnich.
Do you value review scores? While you're posting an opinion in the comments section below we're off to the job centre.
User Comments
mikejosh1978
Karlius
It seems that most game sales these days are done via word and mouth which is just another form of advertisement. Reviews are a great indication for you and I and I wait for a good review usually before making a purchase. However I don't believe this is the case with most!
Penny Arcade is an awesome strip for people who follow the industry however the truth is the most of COD players will have no Idea what Penny Arcade is or what it does.
However, I believe reviews have their place. I suppose it's these reviews that allow us industry followers insight to the games we buy. While we don't play all games we can get an indication of the games from reviewers we trust therefore we are the start of the word and mouth so in fact reviews are the start of the sales and therefore are the cause of all advertisement. :)
IndoorHeroes
I would argue that what set the COD4 series off down the path of commercial success was the buzz surrounding the multiplayer beta before it launched properly. When Penny Arcade are talking up your game months before its even out you can expect it to sell a few copies.
Karlius