i am so confused...

Tetsuya, your still not making any sence.

Here are a few FIRST WEEK VALUES:

Big Budget uber-title (Gears of War, Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy, Grand Theft Auto, Super Smash Brothers, Madden):

A good start, depending on user base is around 400k for the first week, and minimal drop the 2nd week. GOW has the next-gen highest debut at 500k, but wound up selling ~250k a week for nearly 2 months. Very good. Likewise, for SMG, SSBB, and GTAIV, I would expect similar, or better numbers, as those 3 should be more casual killer apps. H3 would debut much higher, but have a 60% or higher 2nd week drop.

Mid-Level "Big Games" (Call of Duty, Need for Speed, NCAA Football, ect)

A good start on a multi-plat, franchise IP should be around 500k opening week for all platforms, or about half of that on an exclusive platform, and decent legs. It really just depends on the game and budget. Most of these titles are either frontloaded beyond measure, or have enough platforms to make up for the fact they can't do too well on a single console. COD3's LTD for Wii, X360 and PS3 is around 2m, with the X360 getting the lion's share at above 50%.

Smaller-Level Exclusives multi-ports (Bioshock, The Darkness, Forza Motorsports, Stranglehold, Batallion Wars, ect)

With console exclusives, or near exclusives (to where the game might be PS2/Wii, or X360/PS3), I would say around 150k for an exclusive, or 250k for a multi-port would be good and acceptable, depending on legs. Again, it really just depends. Aside from a few 1st party IPs, there aren't too many of these anymore. These games depend on strong multipliers (first week compared with total gross), and great word of mouth to drive sales, as their marketing budgets can't really compete with the Madden's and Call of Duties of the world.

Realilistically, the best barometer would be prediction league averages, as those are the combined hopes and predictions of 50+ people a week. That could show under-preforming or over-acheiving.

Realilistically, just ask me or The Source, we'll give you numbers on what would be good and what wouldn't. A game like Project Sylpheed didn't bomb (to me) at 7.5k, because it was expected to suck, and did....Just worse than we figured.

What games are you questioning? Thats the true question here. It's hard to give a full answer, because unlike movies, the multipliers can be awesome for a game, and the opening week never really can matter. Just look at Wii Play, Guitar Hero, Rainbow Six Vegas for X360, FNR3 for X360, and Rayman for Wii. None of those games had spectacular openings, but all but Rayman hit the 1m mark pretty easily, and are still going. In Rayman's case, it's sold well well well above the other ports of the title, and for Ubisoft, was most likely spectactular.

the thing is i am making sense...i understand your perspective and i agree....but what about lifetime sales....what should a game sale

Tetsuya,

There may be a level where you can say a game is a "hit" or not... I'd say if a game sells 1M in "the Americas" or 300-500K in Japan, that game is a very significant hit, and if it manages 2M in America or 1M in Japan, its an absolute blockbuster; a "killer app," if you will.

But that says NOTHING about whether the game is "successful." Prof. Layton on DS may manage 700-800K sales or more in Japan. For a game of its type, its a highly impressive performance.

But if Dragon Quest 9 came out and did 1M in the first week in Japan, it would be a poor performance. The mark for DQ games is not simply being a "hit," but being the biggest hit of the year and one of the biggest of the generation, with 1.5-2M+ first week, and 3.5-4M+ lifetime.

Different games have different marks for "success" and "failure." It has to do with expectations, which are based on the country, the time of year, the install base, and precedents set by past games.

You are making FAR took broad a generalization of software sales. You can't just give an estimate. The quality of a game, its target audience, genre, legacy, and affordability all factor into the extremely general range of how well it should be aiming to sell.

T, I know we seem like we are just being annoying, but we cant answer your question, because we dont have anough information.

Its like asking "Whats a good amount of money to pay to rent an apartment?"

We cant answer unless we know what type of apartment, how large, what city its in, whether or not it is near a beach etc etc. For a game like Gears of war, selling 400k Lifetime would be HORRIBLE worldwide. For a game like Ninjabread Man:Wii 400k would likely be that companies BIGGEST and MOST successful game ever.