A flop, should measured by profits, sales and consumer satisfaction, divided by marketing and genre.

I think there's a clear distinction between sales and critical acclaim/expectations - but simply put -

1) final product < critical expectations-response/personal expectations = disappointment.

2) If a terrible game/movie makes a lot of money - no one calls it a flop - it's successful, but disappointing.

Simply put - even if disappointing - no one calls a sequl that makes more money than its predecessor - a flop. If it's disappointing - and it fails at market - flop is correct - but flop is a strictly commercial term. You've surely all heard of something "critically acclaimed but flopping at the box office" - and a "critical and commercial flop" - but never " terrible flop movie that made 1000 times it's budget back". No  - it's just "terrible disappointment that went gangbusters at the box office".

Even if a movie is critically acclaimed - if it makes no money - it's still called a flop. Artistically unfair sure - but as much as I love Arrested Development - it wasn't it's lack of critical acclaim that caused them to cancel it after 3 seasons. (awaits movies/prequel miniseries)

There's a critical "flop" - there's a commercial "flop" - but if it succeeds commercially but not critically - it's not a flop.

TLDR version -

Commercial flop > Critical Flop

Twilight is terrible, and most universally agree - but no one calls it a flop.

Science!

flopping will be defined as "any physical act that appears to have been intended to cause the referees to call a foul on another player"

One other way of measuring a flop would be its sale against its counterpart or similar game on the other platform.

Otherwise, I guess a profitability is the key to judge whether a game is flop or not.

A flop is determined by expectations. Yes, if a game does not make a profit you can call it a flop but how will we know?

A flop has to be relative to something. An Uncharted game selling 6m would be considered successful. A GT game selling 6m is a flop. Did both make a profit? Its safe to assume so. Did they meet the sales expected of them?

You just cannot have one definition for the term flop and apply it to every situation.

Voted dev/pub expectation method.

If we went with forum goer expectations, then too many obviously successful games (On the PS3 for the most part) would be flops.

Profit isn't useful. If Games 1, 2 and 3 in a series sell 100 million copies, and then Game 4 sells 20 million, it is a flop, no arguing with that.

Similarly, if games 5, 6 and 7 sell 100k, then game 8 sells 2 million, it is a success.

A flop generally means it fell way below expectations, even if the game does garner good reviews and makes a profit.

The next step below that is a bomb, where the game not only falls way short of expectations, it does absolutely horrendous financially.

I only consider a movie, video game, etc. a flop if it fails to make a profit. The more profit the better, but so long as it does better than breaking even I consider it a victory.

lol when something from that company flops the rules need to be changed!

There's so much bullshitting on here that I consider a game a flop when PS3 fans hype the fuck out of a game, it sells like crap compared to their (ridiculous) expectations and they argue and argue continuously about it not being a flop swapping over to Sony's expectations or if the game broke even and so forth.

I have used "PS3 fan" because there aren't any other fans on this site that do this annoying hyping rubbish, apart from possibly Selnor, but I like his threads, there's a certain vulnerability, modesty and decency about him that I rarely take exception to his genuine passion.

This thread kinda highlights my pov, you have created it just to prove a point - instead of arguing if PSABR is a flop, we will now just argue what a flop is. The same PS3 fans you find in that thread will defend to the hilt the same points they made in there. They will never concede any argument and are never wrong.

Excuse my use of "PS3 fans" again, but that is what we're talking about here. I can't think of any other console that has highly hyped exclusives that sell terribly. At least the PS3 gets exclusives that are hyped.

Just don't be surprised when it blows up in your face and you all look very silly indeed.

Take it on the chin, man up and go for a walk or something. Or just drop the eliteist attitude that causes people to gloat when your precious baby flops on the floor like a limp pancake.