Your point lacks any nuance that makes it worth discussing. Claiming innovation “Should equate to sales; otherwise, we can conclude people aren’t interested in innovation.” excludes many relevant factors like affordability, production quality, accessibility, gameplay density, genre market share, and most importantly: fun.

Is that why you spent the first two comments attacking my choice of example instead of saying anything about the point I was making?

If you stopped to think for a second before you started jerking off to Noita

And again back to Noita? Did the game hurt your feelings or something? Why are you so obsessed with it?

or as you embarrassingly insist “your completely random stand in for unpopular innovation that totally could be any other game and not the one you like and clocked more than 100 hours in”, you could’ve realized many innovative, genre-defining games sold really well. In fact, a common theme among new IPs that sell well is they came up with a new gameplay loop that resonated with many.

And for every genre defining innovative game there's at least 3 other games that sell as well if not better because they're safe bets. Clair Obscure was a great an innovative game and has sold 8 million units in total. Oblivion remaster, which is literally Oblivion reskinned, sold over 9 million within the first 3 months after release. Battlefield 6 sold 7 million units within the first 3 days and the latest COD doesn't have exact sales numbers but had over 50 million players within the first month. You explain to me how COD, which is hardly an innovative series now, was 6 times more appealing to gamers than Clair Obscure, which was a great and innovative game?

That's my point with Noita as well. Noita at it's core it not a bad game, which is why it has sold well. But because it has made certain innovative design decisions it will never sell as well as something like Stardew Valley, which is very much the opposite of innovative because by the admission of the developer they've effectively cloned harvest moon.

But that's the nuance you claim is lacking so continue ignoring the point I'm making and instead attack Noita for the fourth time for some weird reason.