I really don't have anything to say here anymore. Well, maybe. I would like to apologise to zexen_lowe, who may...or may not, have been upset by what happened after my warning. However, let's not dwell on the past, so...

Not every game can be a Mario or a COD...

What makes a game successful? Well, that's a very difficult question to answer, but maybe Eric Nosfinger, key developer at High Voltage Software (the company who made The Conduit, and...you really don't want to know) can answer his question. When talking about the original game and how it spawned a sequel, he mentioned the following:

“People look at it and they say, if it’s not a million unit seller it’s a flop. That’s preposterous,” said CEO Eric Nofsinger. “If that really were the minimum bar for a success, the game industry would be gone in under a year. There are thousands of games released that don’t sell a million units. There are like ten games a year that sell over a million units. But if you can sell a few hundred thousand copies -- 300, 400 thousand copies, which is in the range that we did -- we made money off that. We did well.

Personally, I believe he's right on the money. How does it matter if a game has sold 70,000, or 70 million, if the company thinks it's a success? It's the companies and the investors who predict sales for games, so if the new Zelda game had predicted sales of 10million and reached 8, it would be considered a failure.

However, if a game like The Conduit had expected sales of around 250k and reach nearly 500k, then it's clearly a success. Not every game can be a Mario or COD, you know.

Of course, it can be difficult to judge the sales of a game, because two key pieces of information are missing:

• Cost of production and advertising
• Expected sales/revenue from the game

 13. http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=124137&page=1&str=782214510# (Why does Microsoft find little success in the east?)

1 million would have been a lot for a game like The Conduit which surely didn't have as big of a budget as many other games. So success is definitely about $.

Also, "FF13, which has now sold over 5 million WW, has only just started to turn a profit, due to extrememly high marketing and development costs..."

1. FFXIII has sold 6.23 million so far.

2. No one knows FFXIII's development cost so...

3. Extremely high marketing? I've never even seen an ad for the game where I live whereas I see plenty for far smaller games.

...really? I must have saw at least, AT LEAST 10-15 adverts for it a week for the month before its launch

Also, it's rumoured that the high development costs meant that the game would have to sell north of 5 million to break even, something which I think wasn't clear enough in the OP. Which is now updated

"There are like ten games a year that sell over a million units."- Eric Nofsinger.

I should put this in my sig. 

Maybe you haven't seen any but I still feel it's appropriate to post this here:

Lol, so true. I think someone needs to go speak to a certain Mr. Smeags about the matter

I'd say it's around 50, including evergreen titles and new releases. Because some games only pass the mark in a year, with sales in previous years. It's all very confusing, but I'm sure he's misinformed

Nice. Now that's advertising

I think more interesting about this photo is the fact that Chinatown wars was being advertised underneath. Now THAT's a great game which needed better advertising!

I'm going to do it without Smeags' permission.

I'm a rebel. 

You awful man. How DARE YOU do something like that without asking permission first?

Also, why isn't it in your sig yet? I am sad now

It's done.

Smeags ain't the boss of me.