Like most other games, it depends on the budget/cost of development for the game. If I made an indie game that took about 6 months to complete, assuming that I'm living alone and paying all my expenses out of pocket, and have to pay employees within the company if there are any...let's say the overhead for 6 months is $20,000 for living expenses and payroll for the artist and composer. If I want to break even and my game is $4.99, Nintendo takes 30% of that leaving the net profit on each game sold at around $3.49.
Some quick maffs tell us that around 5,730 copies of this game need to be sold to break even, Any more than that is profit. And of course the variables in this situation can change. You may have very low rent and overhead expenses because you may have a mortgage or maybe you're a one man team, etc. I'd imagine decent games that do get coverage and are indeed decent games make their money back at least. The scenario is different for most every dev because their living situation or team sizes vary. In addition to those overhead costs, you also have to worry about commercial engine fees if you're using a commercial game engine, any software purchased during development, development kits, etc.
Good question, but there's no real good answer I'm afraid. It's really context sensitive. Most indie games aren't Shovel Knight, but I'd imagine that also a lot of these games are coming as ports from other platforms which isn't that expensive to do for most indie titles. So that R&D Cost is negligible in a lot of cases. The biggest hurdle to making great profit as an indie is the cut that Nintendo takes off the top.
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