There might well be a point where theres no point in exceeding amount "X" in developing a triple A game, from the developers point of view.
MW3 afaik has a development budget of 50 million, BF3 will have a similar budget no doubt, its quite clear to me that the end result of that large development budget is very impressive, competition between these companies for market share is causing them to invest more into their games.....that can only be a good thing from the consumers pov
Exactly. Competition will have a much bigger impact on how much money is devoted to a game's development than the revenue its predecessor created. The only thing that limits a company in that regard is how much money they've got available and whether it makes sense to invest it into that game.
If by better you mean popular then i agree, however if you want to compete against say GT at its own game, then yes you are going to require a very impressive budget to do so.
That's a given. But using your money efficiently, you can get a better result with the same amount or money or less. You can also hhave the biggest budget in the world, if your design decisions are rubbish, that's not going to amount to anything.
Failing that, break into your piggy bank, and attempt to build your own GT game....how good will your graphics engine be, how many manufactures licenses will you obtain.
Uh, what? We're talking about budgets in the video game industry and how pouring more money into it doesn't necessarily make the game better once you reach a certain point. You of course need to have a big budget to compete with GT and Forza, you don't necessarily need
more than them to create a game that's better.
Or let me put it this way: In terms of budget, there's a point of diminishing return. Once you reach that, increasing the budget won't increase the quality of the game as much. Let's assume you've got two games, one with a budget of 50 million dollars, one with a budget of 60 million dollars. Will the second one always be the better game? For sure not, one single stupid design decision and those additional ten million dollars will amount to absolutely nothing.
Throwing more money at something can make it better, is likely to make it better, but doesn't automatically better.
If your using Taste, nutritional value or desirabilty, as the means by which you define "better" then of coarse the steak isnt inferior neither is it superior, but if i ask myself which is the better food stuff, i would side with oranges simply because they are more widely available, affordable, and are just as important for nutrition/health, whilst taste or preferance remains subjective.
If we were being logical, both would fail, because neither is a decent base for a somewhat healthy diet. Some people won't be able to afford the steak, that's true. However, such people wouldn't buy oranges either because they'd just buy rice instead.
Quality does not equate as better, why shouldnt aspects of the game such as the user interface, music, the brand image, or price be taken into account, what about more abstract things like the games "Atmosphere" or "feel" or other artistic aspects to the game.
All of those things have an effect on the end users overall game experience, to omit those things wouldnt be to judge the game fully
As far as things that are ingame, I'll agree with that, such as atmosphere, GUI, music and so on - but how does the brand's image change your game experience? Aside from being a fanboy that's 100% pleased, no matter what, because there's the right badge on the box oof the game?
Does your experience with Gran Turismo change because Lucas Ordoñez got the chance to drive an LMP car because of the GT Academy?
The only reliable arbitary measure is unit sales, if you just want to look at Graphics/Physics/content amount & quality, your still omitting many other features of the games appeal that simply cannot be equated or measured through objective means.
Who in the world said I was just rating the game based on graphics, physics and content?
And from the point of view of a buisiness man, sales figures are meaningless; the only thing that matters is profit. And sales figure are an indicator for that at best. And even that doesn't mean a thing when we're talking about how good the game is, as both games follow a different system to generate profit: Forza releases more games and DLC and thus requires less units sold to generate the same profit as GT.
And I can guarantee you, the profit is the only thing Sony and Microsoft will be caring about. Me, I don't care about profit or sales, I care about a quality game. So, to whom would the sales figures themselves be an indicator of which game is better?
Also, sales figures don't say anything about longevity. A game that's been sold often but collects dust soon after, is that a good game? I wouldn't say so.
sales picked up after week 40 is because a) people still believed GT5 wasn't far away and wanted a taste of it and b) GT5 was still so far away that people wanted something GT to play in the meantime. 
