HappySqurriel on 25 December 2007
Many low budget games (like Zack and Wiki) have such small development costs that they can break even after less than 100,000 units are sold to retailers; if a publisher made $20 off of each copy of a game that was sold (which is a reasonable estimate for a $40 game) a $5 Million game, which would be middle of the road for a Wii game, would require sales of 250,000 to break even.
I think it is fair to call any game that is unprofitable a flop ...
A game like Zack and Wiki is going to be very difficult to categorize in either category though because it will likely end up bringing in a ROI similar to some of the better selling games of the year, but at the same time will (probably) not sell more than 500,000 units.
