Sega Sammy posting losses, cutting jobs...despite supporting the Wii?

[theRepublic]

ChichiriMuyo said:
A million units hardly counts as a ton in my book. Frankly, when Namco said it takes 500k sales to turn a proft on HD consoles I'm pretty sure they meant at a bare minimum and that most games still won't even profit at that level. Reports posted here (can't remember off the top of my head when/where) have people that suggest 80% of games released fail to make a profit, and Sega is certainly no exception to the rule. Yeah, they make decent games no one wants to play and sell tons of their crappy games, but maybe that should be a sign to them. They put tons of money into untested waters and make games that don't have a clearly defined and populous target audience. For that, they lose tons of money. Again, to an investor there's just no excuse for this when it's already been shown that currency exchange only makes at most 20% of those loses.

You are correct.  Only 20% of released games make a profit.  If you include projects that get started but are never released, then only 4% of games are profitable.

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/only-four-percent-of-video-games-make-a-profit-ndash-eedar-/?biz=1