A low end title, by definition could be just about anything. I was just giving random numbers for what I figured would be considered a low budget game.
By low budget, I'm not talking Monster Madness-type. I'm more meaning Vampire Rain, Project Sylpheed, and a few others.
Monster Madness-type games that are very simple UE3 projects probably cost from $500,000 to $2,000,000 including publishing (and I'd think getting the materials for packaging/distribution cost quite a bit too).
A good example would be XBLA games for a litmus test: none, if very few, have gone over the $1m USD mark. I talked with the Band of Bugs creator (for XBLA, an Isometric RPG), and they said it was made for a few hundred thousand USD. It's a pretty good game to compare Monster Madness to. Difference is, BoB is $10.
About Call of Duty 4:
There's no real way to say how good, or bad it'll do now GTA4 is DOA this year. With GTA out of the way, COD4 could do gangbusters. COD3 was a turd compared to COD2, but managed 2.5m copies in the US alone (1m between Wii/PS3, 1.1m+ on X360, and still charting).
I'd assume, if COD4 got rave reviews, it could manage 4m in the US. That'd might make it challenge SMG for a few months, or years even.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
