Are sales the best indicator of overall quality in games?

[(((interference)))]

My take on this question:

games are a highly subjective media! Like for instance music: We all agree (I guess?) that for instance Lady Gaga selling tons, does not necessarily mean that her music has highest quality.
Subjective means that each person typically has a drastic/slight different taste, which results in different receptions of a game. At the end, I really think that commercial success has a big portion of luck: good product, right advertising, right release time, hype, ...

I agree and disagree, while you can't determine down how good a game is to criteria like sales, Metacritic scores etc. games definitely aren't as subjective as music.

To me it seems, that with games, within a particular genre the best of that genre (at least with core genres - not sure about casual titles) will always sell well - the cream always rises to the top so to speak. Look at FPSs what are the best? KZ2, Halo, BF, COD are all up there. RPGs are the same, Mass Effect, Bioshock, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fable 2.
Action/adventure- Gears, Uncharted, MGS, GTA, RDR, Assassin's Creed. Driving games - GT5, Forza, PGR, Burnout, NFS:Shift.

You get the point, this is very different to music where some relatively unknown band might be way better than anything on the top 40 charts. It's because games are not art, they're still products and people buy the product with the best featuresets.

 

[obonicus]

But it still is like that. Look at Clover last-gen: they made some terrific games but none of them sold. Mirror's Edge was IMO a really good game (with flaws, but then all of the top-sellers have flaws as well) that didn't sell that great. Some people loved Dead Space, but likewise it didn't do that great. Tons of games that people enjoy quite a bit on the Wii just don't sell well.