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It's been mentioned many times before but sales =/= quality. Sales has a correlation with popularity sure, but not quality. Sometimes it's even inversely related.
If sales = quality, then well recently well selling series like Sword Art Online, OreImo or Infinite Stratos will be considered great shows... which they are far from that. I know that personally I would watch at the very least would watch almost any Kyoani series over those three, so they are doing something right. Unfortunately, Kyoani series are often no better than "alright" or "mediocre".
The problem with Free is simple. It focused way too much on trying to pander to a female audience and its character came out as flat cardboard cutouts representing different archtypes designed to appeal to fans of certain tropes. The visuals were great, the music was fitting and even the story was sufficient. But oh boy were the characters terrible, and sports series often double up as character dramas, and Free sucked on that front. Kyoani has a tendency of reusing the same type of jokes, gags and character traits in every one of their series, only differing in intensity, and it completely backfired in Kyoukai no Kanata, which essentially feels like Shakugan no Shana but with accentuated moeblobs and goofiness.
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