if it breaks even its not a failure because its not only about money but about reputation and about establishing your product etc and about making consumers happy. (fuck the stupid greedy shareholders they are just parasites)
The whole industry and the internet community has a flawed opinion on what a failure is.
E.g. Lets say you are RockstarGames you do NOT want to make GTA5 on WiiU because you are not sure if it will be as successful as on PS3 or 360.
This is a valid point BUT your IP is so huge it will sell and it will 100% break even. But deciding against it is a mistake because there is not only short term profit but also long term profit. You will establish your IP and then the next instlallment (as long as the quality is there) will sell even better. If you act as Activision did on the other hand with delaying the most important game in the series (modern warfare1 that made it a huge success) for over a year and then another installment completely skips the Nintendo platform then you just sabotaged your own effort in establishing your IP.
If you dont lose money on something and you make people happy it was def worth it and was not a failure. The Vita for example is also not a failure because it is profitable. It might not sell that much but the device does have its fanbase and thats what counts. I mean seriously people bash a console they have no interest in and say it fails but why do they care about it? Its like saying a movie was shit and failed when it was in italian and you just understand english it was clearly not ment for you so your opinion is irrelevant.
I also think its pretty funny that alof of companies that have games that sell 1-5m at max dare to say a system that sells 5-10m is a failure.
I mean there is more than 3x as many people that are willing to pay 3-6x the money for that "failing system" than there are people that want to buy the devs 60 dollar game. So whose product is a failure now huh?
