Alright, I guess you people deserve my reasoning for why I don't consider it of any value for relevant discussion.
It would be silly to say that sales in no ways reflects the quality of an anime. Obviously if something sells, and at the ridiculous prices they sell for over there, the product must be up to some kind of value.
If something sells it's doing it's job. It fits its intended purpose in appealing to a certain subsection of people. But does "It fulfills its purpose, therefore it is good." really hold any water? Of course it does! Problem is what we are defining here. Good for what? Numbers are objective, but people aren't. And this is where I feel that a lot of where the animosity comes from when sales get brought up. Suddenly people view it as like the star from Super Mario Brothers. Screw the rules, I have numbers! They dismiss people's arguments as subjective while holding the only objective measurement in the house, therefore they win!
Except analyzing these numbers is also a subjective measure, and not realizing this can make you quite insufferable. The smug generated from douchebaggery contributes to global warming. Stop already.
It also makes people uncomfortable, as valuing everything in terms of $ is. Imagine if you killed someone that is only worth $20k a year, and the penalty is only 1/3 as much as you killing someone worth $60k a year, and you could kill homeless people for free. Of course, we'd love to imagine certain concepts worth more than the currency paper that can be valued to them. But this is neither here nor there.
Let's talk about fast food chains. Now, I bet some of you are reading this, and getting ready to hit the reply button thinking "OMFG not another pretentious anti-intellectual hipster argument!" Don't worry, I'm only pretentious on Thursdays and no I'm not going to insult everyone's intelligence by making vague circular arguments about otaku pandering. But regardless of what you think of the quality of fast food, there's certainly a dominant factor in them being successful and it's not on some kind of culinary merit.
Marketing. Business. Efficiency. They make their product known, they find efficient methods of distributing said product, and spend resources on actually making sure the product is to of some degree of acceptable quality. You can't sell anything if people don't know about it right?
So what do I see when an anime sells well? Good business practices. They used their limited resources and managed them well, and also managed to get their desired consumer base to come in and buy the product. Clearly getting a nice return on investment is something to be complimented on, and wise business practices ensure us sequels...
Which has fuckall to what I value in an anime. What's good for the business and industry isn't good for everyone else, necessarily. It's nice that there are many aspiring businesspeople that can manage an operation well, but honestly, why would I care? If they fail, then competition will take its place anyways. It's not like I'm a shareholder.
In the end, I came to watch Japanese cartoons, not delve into the industry of them.