Makes sense, Mario Kart 8, Smash Bros, Super Mario 3d World, Splatoon. Probably do need at least 2 million to break even.

nintendo games have the highest attach rate of any game, if you see how few wii u's they sold and how well (most) of their games sold its amazing

I don't believe it. If Fire Emblem Awakening needed just above 250.000 units sold to keep the franchise going, then it obviously didn't need to sell 2m. Big games like Zelda and 3D mario of course are going to need bigger amounts (I'm sure Xenoblade X has been finantially unsuccessful, and it will be one of the first titles to be ported to the NX to compensate for that).

Misleading title, "average" is not the same as "all."

Sounds reasonable. Some games (like Zelda) needs to sell more, some less.

Looking at the Japanese transcript using Google Translate, I've found the mention of the 2 million... and I'm pretty sure it's not talking about profitability of games in general.

Rather, it's talking about the difference between games just for Japan and games for the whole world. It's saying that 300,000 units are what you can expect as "average" for games released in Japan only, and 2 million on average for worldwide releases.

Pretty sure it's less about "how much do we need to be profitable", and more "how many can we estimate when working out how much to spend on a game". In other words, if they're taking a risk if their game needs more than 2 million and it's releasing worldwide.

To put it another way, it's not "the average Nintendo game needs 2 million to be profitable", but "the average Nintendo game sells 2 million".

Yeah, I'm sure Mario Kart Wii had the same budget as Zelda BOTW. Phew, thank god it sold 35 million or Nintendo would have been doomed. I think Nintendo would have had to go third party if Wii Sports hadn't sold 80 million with its insane budget.

That may not be true.I remember the games director(I think his name was Takahashi?) saying that the games budget was not big, and would equal more or less of a AA game(tried to search were I read that, but I cant find it).So seeing that the game had little advertising, and the game is nearing 1 million with digital, I would say that they at the very least paid off development, with good chances of making a small profit already.

So most WiiU games were flops?

But thats only Wii U games. Are "Average Nintendo Games" = Wii U/Console games?