What's the number a console needs to sell not to be a failure?

[MDMAlliance]

Dunban67 said:

MDMAlliance said:

Dunban67 said:
It s multiple areas that indicate success or failure and they will differ somewhat w each company - But the basics are : financial performance, market share and investor expectations

Merely making a profit is probably not enough for any of them to be considered a success- if MSFT loses a bunch of market share but makes a small or moderate profit ( this generation) they will prob consider it a failure - if Nintendo loses a bunch of market share AND makes significantly less money than they did on the Wii it will prob be considered a failure

At the same time, this is specifically about failure.  You can not fail, but at the same time still not succeed.  

Failure, as I think of it, is failing to profit from your product.  Even if you sell well, not turning a profit in the end hurts.
But of course, the installed base of your system matters to other companies because a higher installed base means better chances of seeing results from investment.

It depends on what the goal of the company is for that specific product at that time -   Amazon lost tons of money for years in order to expand market share - it was a succesful strategy -  they could have turned a profit sooner but it would have slowed thier growth

when MSFT launched the 1 st xbox they cared about market share much more than profit 

right now Sony has said market share is the # 1 goal for the PS4 ( at this time)-   

If the Wii u breaks even or makes a small profit yet gives up huge market share it will be consider a failure by Nintendo especially coming off the Wii.   

@Bold:  Except the goal they were going for was expanding their market share.  It's different if they released a product meant to reel in profits, but instead shows a net loss.  


@Italics:  That would most likely be due to the fact that they wanted to participate in the big game, so getting known was more important than making a profit for the time being.  However, that was set up for their successor.

@Underline:  Losing portions of the market share (whether large or small) isn't ideal, but when it comes to this topic, making a profit is more important than how much of the market share they have any single generation.  What your console had the previous generation vs what your generation has now aren't that largely affected by each other.  If they were. the sales of each console generation should reflect it more accurately.  Fact is, it doesn't.  However, that market share does mean something, but losing it doesn't mean failure for that console.  If they actually maintained their portion of the market (percentage wise), that would at least be successful, but isn't required.