Game review and news outlets cover the games most likely to be of value to their audiences, partially because they foster that with their own interest, and partly because the data tells them what their audience is reading or watching.
Have to vehemently disagree with this, it is clear that their coverage is not dictated by the value their audiences receive but from other more corporate values. And as time goes on the media coverage on games has been less and less valued. It has nothing to do with my option on the media but my observations on the industry. The reason I brought up zenonaughts 2 was that it has 1/10 the reviews but similar sales, and that is indicative of the clear decline of the main stream gaming review system not having the pull it once did.
It is very much not clearly indicative of that. It has 1/10th of the reviews because it is expected to be relevant to far fewer people than Saros. The audience tends to value games that they’ve had marketed to them, which is a correlation for what should be obvious reasons.
They sold a similar amount, your agument only works if saros sold a proportional amount more (10x in this case). As it stands the marketing clearly did not work.
The studio’s previous game, which is very similar on a gameplay level, sold over 1M copies. Saros costs $10 more than Returnal cost and almost twice as much as Xenonauts 2. Beyond that, Returnal was a difficult game, and trophy data shows lots of people didn’t get anywhere close to finishing it; distaste for the previous game and a slightly higher price for what is, by Sony’s standards, less production value than you can find in other PS5 games at $70, are far better explainers for Saros’ performance.
Have to vehemently disagree with this, it is clear that their coverage is not dictated by the value their audiences receive but from other more corporate values. And as time goes on the media coverage on games has been less and less valued. It has nothing to do with my option on the media but my observations on the industry. The reason I brought up zenonaughts 2 was that it has 1/10 the reviews but similar sales, and that is indicative of the clear decline of the main stream gaming review system not having the pull it once did.
It is very much not clearly indicative of that. It has 1/10th of the reviews because it is expected to be relevant to far fewer people than Saros. The audience tends to value games that they’ve had marketed to them, which is a correlation for what should be obvious reasons.
They sold a similar amount, your agument only works if saros sold a proportional amount more (10x in this case). As it stands the marketing clearly did not work.
The studio’s previous game, which is very similar on a gameplay level, sold over 1M copies. Saros costs $10 more than Returnal cost and almost twice as much as Xenonauts 2. Beyond that, Returnal was a difficult game, and trophy data shows lots of people didn’t get anywhere close to finishing it; distaste for the previous game and a slightly higher price for what is, by Sony’s standards, less production value than you can find in other PS5 games at $70, are far better explainers for Saros’ performance.