lets not forget that the point of making a game is to not just cover the cost but to actually make money. if a game takes 300,000 sales to break even i don't think it can be considered a success until its at least 400 - 450 grand or so. thats at the bare minimum. of course the hype of a game also plays a role in what it takes to be a success in the gaming public's eyes. lets say zack & wiki needs to sale 250 thousand to break even, we can then probably consider it a good economic success at maybe like 350 thousand, that means it covered its own cost plus made the company some decent money. now if the game was hugely hyped and was in a popular genre (neither of which are true) it would take more than just making some profit to be considered successful.
for example, if mario galaxy (being a huge franchise and super hyped and very critically acclaimed) suddenly stopped selling and only ended up selling 4 million on what is easily the most popular system of this gen then i would not call that a success.
end of '08 predictions: wii - 43 million, 360 - 25 million, ps3 - 20 million
Games I've beat recently: Super Mario Galaxy, Knights of the Old Republic, Shadow of the Collossus
Proud owner of wii, gamecube, xbox, ps2, dreamcast, n64, snes, genesis, 3DO, nes, atari, intellivision, unisonic tournament 2000, and gameboy
