Good thread. I think you hit it on the nail but I'll take it a step further. The reason they call games a flop or not is simply to further their own opinion about a certain game, system, or brand. Really when I see people calling things a flop or not it is always deeply rooted in some personal bias. Very rarely do I see people actually analytically taking sales, estimated production values, and company expectations to see whether or not they made a profit. Best example of this was obviously Monster Hunter 3 in Japan on Wii. The idea has been completely corrupted by those who have no idea what they are talking about just like the hardcore and casual terms.
Really people need to profess some Socratic Wisdom and simply state they have no freaking idea instead of acting like they do. Whether it was successful or not can easily be found out by the company's future plans and if you want to try to figure it out yourself simply looking at the numbers isn't logical.
We need to start looking at the success ratio at a more rational perspective rather than "fire and brimstone" terminology. Good write up Maxwell.
