Why do people say sales don't matter?

More sales=more 3rd party support, more money for developers to create games and more money to spend on game development. not to mention more online players to compete with. Without sales, Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony would not even exist.

Without at least decent sales, 3rd party developers would have no incentive to create games for that system, the company would have less money and thus would not be able to make as many games or have the money to create games that use the system's full potential.

Yet so many people say console sales don't matter. Why?

Because they bought a Wii U

Sales can have any number of repercussions on determining what gets made or doesn't on which system, yes. However, when people say "sales don't matter," sometimes it's done as a (legitimate) counter-argument to others trying to use sales as a measurement of quality. For example, saying that Justin Beiber must be a great artist because he sells so many albums. It's a common logical fallacy, and rather irritating when it pops up around people trying to discuss the actual qualities of the game/movie/album/whatever at hand.

EDIT: As Black Knight just stated, it's also sometimes stated as a form of damage-controlling. Gotta love that cognitive dissonance.

Sales matter for the industry as a whole,yes,But alot of the discussion is pitting consoles against each other and most people know the sales for either console wont be so low to cause any of the things you listed,this is why so many people dont care.Most sales threads are created by Fanboys looking for ownage and stroking their ego's with something that doesnt affect anybody on the "losing" console.Yes sales matter to a point but neither console is going to flop that hard.

Also want to point out that sales are not the only factor in determining things like third-party support. If it was, the Wii would have had quality third-party software up the wazoo. Ease of development, hardware specs, relationships between developer/publisher and console-maker, and differing gaming markets can just be as influential a factor as raw sales.

Who says sales dont matter? Sales generate cash and everyone knows cash is whats pays the bill.

My guess is that its probably someone who bought a WiiU you heard it from, and they are just idiots because of course sales matters even to Nintendo.

Ouch.

Haha! That's awesome! Hey....I bought a Wii-U!!

Sales don't matter in the regard that when a game is good, it's good whether it sells or not.

But the reality is that no sales = no support.

Because their favorite console/game doesn't sold as good as the other one, but anyway, in some point it doesn't matter and that is the joy and experience you get from a game or console, and that's it, it does speak, of mass appeal (or quality), and exposition.

People say that sales don't matter for a variety of reasons. Damage control because a product they supported didn't sell well; their genuine opinion that sales do not, in fact, matter; to spite whatever brand fanboy whose worshiped product has sold well by claiming it is irrelevant; or, like I sometimes like to mention to the avid Microsoft or Sony fanboys, because you are irrelevant to the sales and they are irrelevant to you - you had little importance in their amount and you gained absolutely nothing from it. It's part of my incapacity to understand why anyone cares enough about a company they have no financial ties to to the point of spending hours a day discussing why said company is superior, and trying to prove it to other people, providing, essentially, free advertising for the company they're a fan of.

oh damn, that's harsh :o

I guess its how you look at it, if you want games to be mostly a one "game" thing and then you dont hear about it again, then ya sales dont matter, a game is still good.

But if you want to have games be more than a single thing and see more, which is usually the case with great games, then sales will always matter.

Well, sales don't matter in respect to quality.

Just because a lot of people are buying it doesn't mean it's good, and vice versa.

Sales matter, but if people are saying sales will dictate non 1st party games (3rd party game distribution), then that's ridiculous. There will never be a third party game not put on a Sony or MS system because they think it wouldn't sell enough copies. Wii U is a different story because Nintendo has always had problems with 3rd parties.

People caring about quality (however they perceive it) don't care if there's tons of hugely successful garbage everywhere. Why would they care unless they own stock in the publisher?

As for the topic title, it depends on what you're judging. There are games that are not big sellers at all that the few buyers love. Sales numbers don't matter to them.

Yeah but that wasn't the question, OP was talking about console sales, not game sales.

I think everyone agrees that quality and sales of a game are not directly proportional. See Psychonauts vs. Wii Fit

It really depends on their meaning. Some people just say it because they have blind 'faith' their platform of choice will shift more units in the future.

Obviously from one side more console sales = larger install base = higher chance a specific game will get ported to the platform

At the same time for games high sales numbers aren't necessarily an indicator of quality and the enjoyment you get out of a game isn't dictated by how many other people have it too.

Sales obviously do matter, but they fluctuate quite quickly, so taking a snapshot of them at a specific point in time isn't really that relevant. For example, here in the UK the PS4 had a record breaking launch, becoming the fastest selling home console ever. Knocking the PS3 to second. The PS3! That launch was horrific, it sold for about 3 days then no one bought one for years. It was the same story for the PSP. Obviously the PS3 rallied later on in its life after the game drought cleared up, but for the first few years that system was DOA

Yep i know.

And of course sales matters there, afterall there is a reason why more devs are turning away from the WiiU and simply not developing for it anymore.

That pretty well sums it up.

A reasonable person might respond with "sales don't matter" when someone tries to troll them with sales figures for something they enjoy. The WiiU selling abysmally doesn't make me enjoy it any less, and it doesn't make me ashamed of my purchase.

The WiiU in particular is treated as a joke simply because it hasn't sold well in its first year (as evidenced by this thread), and people love to throw that in the face of anyone who has a WiiU and loves it. In that sense alone, a personal sense, I can see why someone might say that sales don't matter, even though they should know that sales always matter in the long run.

If someone means that sales don't matter from a business standpoint, then, well.... yeah.

That Wii U has better games right now than the new systems, and even without third party support or high sales it will have the best exclusives. Sales only affect shareholders and unimaginative sequels most of the time.

PS3 has the lowest sales last gen, yet still managed to have a ton of great games, while the Wii dominated all in sales yet had the least amount of games.

I guess sales matter to forum fanboys, so that's something I guess...

Wii U has been out for a year. The new systems for a week.

When have sales actually improved games for the dedicated? More often than not, sales actually bring about the dumbing-down of games to appeal to the masses. Take Disgaea for instance, the developers of that series want to appeal to a broader audience, so they want to simplify the gameplay. Only a select few buy games from that series and like it the way it is, they don't care if it sells or appeals to everybody. Call of Duty took a similar transformation in the past.

Look at games on Vita, Dreamcast and Gamecube. Despite bad sales, those systems have amazing games that can't be found anywhere else. Again, sales matter, but only to bean counters and forum fanboys.

We are talking about system sales, not software sales.

Of course sales matter. They just matter a little too much to certain people on internet forums like this one who try to live vicariously through their multi-billion dollar corporation of choice, or use them to put down the people who made a different choice. Much like how review scores DO in fact, matter, but many people tend to USE them in the wrong way/obsess over them in a plainly unhealthy fashion.

As a side note about a personal peeve, "Why do people say…" is rapidly catching up with "Am I the only one who…" for most irritating thread title.

My second paragraph covers that.

I guess console sales matter more to single-system owners who tend to be more casual than other gamers. It's much more important to them to get all the games on one system while dedicated gamers tend to buy more than one system with each one's strengths in mind, to broaden their gaming horizons.

You failed to make any sort of point. Nintendo's consoles are filled with a bunch of boring, unimaginative sequels because sadly no matter how well or poorly Nintendo consoles sell the sorts of core gamers they attract only buy a tiny handful of franchises.

The Vita, Dreamcast and Gamecube boasted strong games but so did the X360, PS2 and NES. There isn't a negative correlation between amazing games that can't be found anywhere else and hardware sales. Quite the opposite as a matter of fact since developers like to release their games to the biggest audience possible.

I own every system that ever was. What is your point?

The point is, Nintendo consoles haven't succeeded with third party devs in a long time, yet they still put out games that their fans want. Doesn't matter if sales of their consoles are high or low for Nintendo.

They're the only console makers who can survive without them due to their high quality exclusive software.

That sales don't matter to dedicated gamers, only games, and that is what's important.

My final thought before I hit the sack is this: If sales didn't matter for the Wii, why would they suddenly matter for Wii U? And vice-versa for Sony and Microsoft systems?

Understanding the dynamics of the market won't do anyone any harm. Low console sales=no third party support, paired with a derivative and formulaic first party offering, insufficient hardware specs, terrible marketing, disappointing press releases and gimmicks with no appeal even on the casual demographic=a failure of a system.

Providing fans with games they like does not equal failure.

While true, that is quite a simple task, considering Nintendo fans are content playing rehashes of the same games time and time again. Which is one of the reasons why the system is underpowered, by the way.

lol the hate for Nintendo is strong with this one.

Loads of people have no problem with Nintendo's games, hell most consider them one of the best developers on the planet.

With each generation, Nintendo's consoles have lost massive amounts of marketshare and their fans have become more and more isolated and distinct. As late as the N64 era broad ranges of games did well (games ranging from Waverace to Perfect Dark) but in the GC era Nintendo started encouraging the franchise fantacism of what remained of its fanbase.

In a way it was smart because it made them less likely to go anywhere (the modern Nintendo fan cares for little outside Mario and Zelda) but in another way it was dumb because now Nintendo is trapped by the obsessions of its fanbase. Games not tied into one of a tiny handful of franchises (even when they are made by the legendary Miyamoto) fare poorly at retail, which scares off development talent on every level.

Its also worth keeping in mind that in contrast to its navel gazing console fanbase, Nintendo's handheld fanbase is broad and composed of core gamers capable of appreciating games not named Mario, Zelda or Sonic so your notion that Nintendo just kind of goes on without third party support isn't fact-based. Of course, the handheld audience is eroding (casuals were a big part of the DS audience, but they have gone to smartphones) but is still in good shape.

You've confused Nintendo fans with bro gamers, who play anything that goes pew pew pew and is simple/mindless, or any EA sports game that's just like the one the year before. Nintendo games are the frothy goodness on top of your hot beverage.

@CarnageHeart: It's not accurate in any true sense to blindly label an entire fan-base like that. I mean I could claim that Sony fans are pedophiles who buy games like "my little sister can't be this cute" and "atelier rorona" and "project miku" type stuff that only appeals to those kinds of people. Or I could say that Sony fans don't support their own company's hardware, using the Vita as an example.

I could talk about Xbox fans and the types of games they support, or PC gamers, etc. but that would all just be randomized personal biases and generalizations that don't reveal behaviors of entire fan-bases.

Let's not go there and reduce this little haven away from system wars to some kind of fanboy wars forum.

The line is blurry. Both audiences are as undiscerning as they come.

Everybody is different. Gamers like Dvader and myself are avid Nintendo fans, yet we enjoy other games and game companies and their products.

When some of you guys blanket-label specific fans, it's almost like you're trying to off-handedly insult us just because of what we like.

You mean like you just did with "bro gamers"?

Exactly. If I'm labeled a certain way, then it's fair play to behave a certain way. It just seems that the anti-Nintendo wagon gets piled on here lately. If you guys want it to be like a fanboy war here then I guess that'll happen.

All I did was state that modern Nintendo fans don't give a monkey's toss about innovation and are perfectly ok with yet another identical Smash Bros, another identical Donkey Kong, another identical Mario, another identical Pikmin. Did I say that's wrong? No, tastes are tastes. I simply stated a fact and why that's important in determining why the Wii U is irrelevant outside of its niche.

If you want to twist that into a fanboy war, hey, go ahead, but don't count on my cooperation.

Fun Fact: Just because a game uses the same characters or IP, it doesn't make it identical to the previous ones.

They're only "identical" if you are a blind fanboy who doesn't know any better.

I'll play ball. What significant innovation was there in Smash Bros Brawl over Melee? What significant innovation is there in DK Tropical Freeze over DKC Returns? What significant innovation was there in any Mario Kart since Double Dash?

If you can't come up with a convincing answer I expect you to take your insult back.

They're as different as any other games that come out these days. Why single out Nintendo and attack their fans when every other game franchise is doing the same thing? Is it because you don't own a Wii U or haven't played any Nintendo games lately?

Do you think Halo 4 was innovative, or GTA V?

Why do you think it's perfectly ok to assume things about games you haven't played? By nature, that's what fanboys do. I thought we were better than all that here on this board?

You're stalling.

Still waiting for that list of innovations for Brawl over Melee.

Either that or for you to take back your insult.

I don't play that game series. As far as DKCR, what's wrong with more of the same? Why hold Nintendo to a higher standard than everyone else?

Isn't that exactly what I said? That Nintendo fans are content with more of the same? And that fact combined with scarce third party support is the cause for the niche status of the Wii U?