How many units does a video game have to sell to qualify as a success or a flop?

Clearly there are some games that are over hyped and don't sell as many as expected but I mean in actual quantifiable terms what does the industry consider a success? 1 million? 500,000?

People are saying that Zack and Wiki is a flop with roughly 140,000 sold. How many would it need to sell to become a success?

Thanks guys.

^welcome! And it's a flop until 250,000 IMO. It also depends on the system.

at least 75% of its predecessor sales imo.

Depends on how much it needs to sell to make a profit. As long as the game turns a profit, it is a technical success.

But I'd assume that the production value of Zack and Wiki was probably not that high, meaning the game probably only needed to sell about 150k-250k to turn a profit. And if we take into account shipments Z&W has probably hit that.

next to that it will sell good in europe.

Depends totally on what is expected of it... If people expected a new IP like Z+W to sell "well" from the beginning they were not tuned in.

There is no statistical number a game has to sell to be a success. If the next main Pokemon only sells 8 million WW lifetime it will be considered a total flop, wheras If something like Z+W approaches 400-500k it is a massive success.

In monetary terms then you could argue that a game needs to be profitable to be a success, but the sales level a game needs to be profitable is different for each game too.... Something like MGS4 that costs tens of millions to produce and market may never turn profit even with 2 million sales, wheras something like Rayman Raving Rabbids was probably profitable with only 100-200k sales.

It landed with a resounding thud in Japan, like so many other titles nowadays, but Z&W has been moving a solid 10k per week in NA since it came out. If it can keep that momentum past the holiday season and sell decently in Europe, it should be able to claim at least minor success.

There have been a lot of obstacles for Zack & Wiki. It was a niche idea to begin with, it had no marketing at all, and worst of all, retailers ignored it completely at launch. A lot of people who had been whipped up by internet hype were disappointed when they went to retailers first week and the retailer hadn't ordered any copies at all.

lets not forget that the point of making a game is to not just cover the cost but to actually make money. if a game takes 300,000 sales to break even i don't think it can be considered a success until its at least 400 - 450 grand or so. thats at the bare minimum. of course the hype of a game also plays a role in what it takes to be a success in the gaming public's eyes. lets say zack & wiki needs to sale 250 thousand to break even, we can then probably consider it a good economic success at maybe like 350 thousand, that means it covered its own cost plus made the company some decent money. now if the game was hugely hyped and was in a popular genre (neither of which are true) it would take more than just making some profit to be considered successful.
for example, if mario galaxy (being a huge franchise and super hyped and very critically acclaimed) suddenly stopped selling and only ended up selling 4 million on what is easily the most popular system of this gen then i would not call that a success.

Personally, i look at 1million being a great achievement for a lot of games. Games like S&M at the olympics with 1.4 sold so far seem great to me. Z&W will sell steadily enough i think, i cant wait till Jan when it comes out here (Uk).

1/3 million is good enough sales to warrent a sequel