GamesIndusty.biz quotes EEDAR's Jesse Divnich speaking at the Montreal International Games Summit saying game marketing is far more influential than review scores, where he said: "You can make the greatest game and it won't even matter. I know that's discouraging to developers at first but it's very true." He goes on to say: "Marketing influences game revenue three times more than quality scores. There's a giant myth out there that reviews scores are the most crucial to a videogame." They offer a couple of examples, thought the second is a bit odd, as it reflects an approximate 300% sales boost based on a greater than 1000% increase in marketing budget:

For its first three months on sale, BioShock, which had $5.5 million in US marketing behind it, sold twice as many copies of EA's Dead Space, which had a budget of $2 million. The same results were found for EA Sports Active, which sold around 720,000 copies with a marketing budget of $5.6 million, compared to My Fitness Coach, which shifted an estimated 250,000 units backed with a $50,000 budget.