I play games for the friends who play them with me, becuase they are alot of fun, and for stress relief.

I agree with farmer.....and Tranquility. [stop staring at me like that ill explain!]
No question marketing does play a large part in the video game insudtry. It is one of the biggest reasons for soaring prices of console games. Perfect example: Halo 2. Massively hyped and market game. I mean you could not walk two feet in the veido game stores or two sentances on a gaming website or magazine withoput mentions of it. Hell Even my beloved PC gamer talked about Halo 2. When the game came out millions bought it. Weather they liked it or not was not the care of the game companies. The games were bought.
And marketing has alot of long term deals too. People get alot of company brand names in their head. They know that if a game is coming out by company x, they must buy it because company x's last game was sooo good, this one must be too!.
One of the perfect examples of this for me was Maxis. I bo8ught nearly every Maxis game that came out just becase they were from the company. i loved it. This was 100% pure marketing i know now. I now know that their name really has little to do with the comapny itself.
Farmer talked about m,arketing well, so ill let him talk more, im rambling and my brain is screaming at me to get lunch.

But i agree with tranquility too on many points. Most games that turn out to be horrible will not be bought. Word of mouth is huge in the gaming industry. People buy games because their friends do. So if a game is horrible, they will find out. Just those fooled by the marketing schemes will be screwed. Driver 3 was a perfect example like tranquility expolained. Even the best marketing campign in the world cannot defeat word of mouth. The publishers know this. Take Star Wars Galaxy. Very, very hyped game. Very massivbely marketed. Yet once gamers got a chance to try it out? They left in droves. They hated the game.

Im rambling here so ill stop, if i think of other things after i get some food in me ill say something. :-)