I really enjoyed this post. (Destiny)

by Xenos , Shores of Time, Thursday, September 25, 2014, 23:36 (3951 days ago) @ car15

The difficulty with taking a strictly by-the-numbers approach to evaluating something's success is that it doesn't factor in customer feedback at all. There is something to be said for taking the Internet's collective opinion with a generous helping of salt, but if you only take sales or number of players online into account, you're not getting the full picture.

I'm curious about how marketing professionals solve this problem. How do they filter customer white noise into something useful? Surveys?

Generally yes. Unfortunately it's still REALLY hard to tell if a product is loved or hated. Take EA for example, they are considered one of the most hated companies of all time (and have won that award a number of times, this year they were only BARELY out-hated by Time Warner), yet their products and games STILL sell incredibly well, even while customers complain the entire time. The truth is most economists and market analysts can barely tell you a few tips on how to sell your products. And now I'm going to stop myself before I rant on about economics.

TL;DR - They use studies mostly but most companies can barely explain why their products sell.

If you are interested in the topic, it's actually funny because companies will even sometimes come right out and say that fact, two happened just this year Sony with the PS4 and DICE with Bad Company. And the other one that amuses me is Square being surprised with the success of Bravely Default, not realizing that Americans Gamers want JRPGs, which about half the gaming world responded with "Uh, duh?"

So yeah, that was a long and barely related conversation that I hoped entertained more than anything else :-D