The Greatest Game of All Time, Boycotts Rarely Work - The Shane Satterfield Show Episode 27

This segment gives me a chance to pontificate on one of the big topics in the video game industry for the week.

And this week, I want to discuss the greatest video game of all time.

And this is something that has bounced around the industry since it started.

Uh, right before I left Game Trailers, we were working on the 100 greatest games of all time.

We had worked on it for, like, six months.

We had the list down pretty much.

We had, like, one more meeting to finalize all our rankings, and then some SVP big wig at Viacom came and basically just killed it, and was like, "I'm tired of you guys doing the same stuff you've always been doing.

Find something else for companies to sponsor." And our marketing people had already locked down sponsors for it.

[laughs] Anyway, um, [laughs] so that was killed, but this is a thing that has been going on for a really, really long time.

And the thing about it is, it's kind of a fool's errand.

There's really no way you're ever gonna say that one game is the greatest game of all time, and everyone's gonna agree with you, because everybody is different.

Some people don't like certain genres and love other genres.

Some people don't like certain types of subject matter that other people do love.

And so finding a consensus on the greatest video game of all time is not easy, and it feels like there's a lot of things that go into it.

And I think one of the biggest things, honestly, is sales.

Because it's easy to sit on social media and say, "This game's better than that game", and talk about it and argue about it or whatever.

It's a lot different when you have to plunk down the 50, 60, $70 for the video game.

And so to me, while it's not everything, sales to me are a big determinant on what the better video games are.

Are there some amazing games that sold horribly? Yes.

Do the vast majority of great games sell well? They do.

So this week, a story came across the wire talking about the sales of video game remakes, and the article said the Resident Evil 4 remake from 2023 has sold 16.8 million copies across all platforms.

It's now sold around the same amount as the original game from [laughs] 2004.

This is really a reflection of just how big or small the install bases were for the old consoles compared to the new ones.

Comparing sales from the old systems to the new ones, it's really not a fair comparison at all.

Now, these sales for the Resident Evil 4 remake, more than triple the sales of Oblivion Remastered and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.