CULTURE: Video gamers "most sophisticated shoppers in the entertainment industry"

There's a New York Times article on why critical reception of video games correlates so closely with sales. What's interesting is that in the realm of movies and music almost the opposite is the case.

The Top 10-selling games of last year — including titles like Gears of War and Guitar Hero 2 —had an average Metacritic score of 87.5. Only one of the top-selling games scored less than 80. (More about that later.) Meanwhile, the Top 10 box-office films of last year — including titles like “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest”’ and “X-Men: The Last Stand” — collected a poor average score of 62.9.

The article makes a few good points about why this might be the case, but I think it's ultimately pretty simple. Video games are expensive, therefore gamers are much less likely to impulse buy. Gaming media is also far more focussed on critical evaluation (previews, reviews, interviews) than music and cinema media, meaning there are plenty more opportunities to know whether a game sounds like it might take your fancy. And lastly, big development studios have big dev budgets (nice graphics, plenty of content, huge teams) and huge advertising budgets to go with them. It's no surprise that development studios with huge staffs and resources tend to make good games.

[Their thumbs may be too busy to raise, but gamers agree with critics via Kotaku]

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