The Impact of Experience: The Influences of User and Online Review Ratings on the Performance of Video Games in the US Market

Commercially successful video games easily sell more than one million units in the US market alone and gross more than $ 100 million. Few research approaches have asked the question what makes a video game succeed in the market. This paper focuses on the role of external information sources. As video games are experience goods whose value for the consumer only becomes apparent after he or she has experienced the product, consumers seek external information in form of user and expert reviews to be able to judge if a video game will fulfil their needs or not. Good ratings by users and experts may promote the success of a given video game. Using a sample of 201 top selling games in the US market, a causal model predicting the influence of user and expert reviews on the success of video games in the US market is constructed, indicating that the perceived quality of a video game through external sources may explain up to 15% of a video game’s distribution. Author