Popularity vs Ratings

[Rious]

So I'm sort of doing a personal project. So in choosing a game, or anything for that matter, I know there are a lot of things to consider, but for this discussion I want to ask which do you think is more important, popularity or ratings. Like in a case where 2 games are good, both are popular and both have good ratings, but one surpasses the other in either area. So in cases where the subjects to be compared are of decent quality, would you consider popularity and ratings to be equally important, or one is more than the other, and by how much?

TLDR: When choosing a game, which is more important to consider, popularity or ratings, or are they equal?

[Logan]

Ratings for me.
Popularity is mostly made by markteing.
Just check how many good games are underrated,like Spec Ops,Max Payne,The Darkness and more.Those have good ratings,but are less popular than games with whole marketing stuff.

[jre]

Ratings and reviews are important as some reviewers will imform you as to why they don't like a game. Poor optimisation and bad in game bugs may be mentioned in a review that could influence whether a player buys a game.

[Jej]

Ratings.

Popularity does not mean quality.

Unfortunately there's some overlap between the two. Because a game is popular people will give something great ratings even if the item is crap.

[DarkCrystalMethod]

If you have sufficient money to afford both then both are bought. Most people might not be in that situation. The one that perhaps has a better community and/or better gameplay would be the preferred game because you're going to be interacting with these people for a very long time. Also button mashing and luck vs skillfull aiming/timing would be a thing to consider, as you may wear your hands out and just give up all the sooner.
Popularity and ratings must be carefully weighed, unless this is a single player game where it doesn't matter to anyone but yourself. The things mentioned above matter more to me for the long term.

Also if its simply a matter of popularity then even some questionably bad games get high marks... on this top 100 list.
http://store.steampowered.com/stats

[Esoteric]

Ratings.

[WERElektro]

Both...
Because if a game ( or online shops ) are not popular, I might think that there aren't exactly many reviews.

For example... there's this online hardware store that has around 500 ratings and an average score of 4.8 out of 5.
And even though there's this other store that has 5 out of 5 stars - but only 40 ratings - I'll go for the shop with the 500 ratings..and the lower score.
Or did I misunderstand something?

[Indiana Georg]

Rating