Reviews Cause Sales?

An interesting article on Gamasutra about whether reviews, or more specifically the Metacritic rollup of review scores, actually affect sales.  The gist is that, in surveying consumers, they rated game reviews as the least important factor in deciding whether or not to purchase a game.

I still think that using pull quotes from good reviews is a useful selling tool on package copy on on your product splash page; studies have shown that such independent validators of a game's quality influence the buying decision, at least in a retail setting. Personal recommendations are much more powerful in influencing a buyer, so if you can generate good word-of-mouth that's much better than a good review.

Sometimes there's no better marketing than just making a great product.