misterd on 28 December 2008
Depends. A normal game made for normal costs with normal expectations would be considered a success at 500,000 on any console.
Some games have extremely high development costs (MGS4) and I suspect would lose money if they didn't break 1m. However, the Wii games are still cheap enough to develop that I don't think this would be a problem. Some games are cheap enough to make that they can turn a profit at even lower numbers (Zack & Wiki supposedly needed only to sell 300k to turn a profit).
Other games have a very high profile, and often a long history, like Mario and Zelda. If they sold just 500k, it might be profitable but would probably be considered a giant disappointment.
