I trying to learn more about the gaming industry just for curiosities sake.  I was just wandering what the low budget games really have to sell in order to be profitable.  What are the costs of a low budget game, for instance . . .

I think that I read where the average cost for an XBLA game was between 100-200k.  If this is true then what do they need to sale to profit on that?

Zack and Wiki - sold 300k so far.  Did they make some good money on that game, just not sure what the dev costs and marketing was for it.

Elebits - same thing, sitting at 250k right now

No More Heroes - getting close to 200k, but did this game make any money?

Dewys Adventure has only sold 70k, so did it lose money being so low?

Nights is another one, only at 160k right now 

Just trying to understand things a little more.  Also, give some games that you know of that have low sales and wether it was good enough to pull profit or not. 

Interesting topic. I myself am rather curious about this. However I don't really have the time to look it up right now, so I will have to wait to do it myself, or hopefully someone will post some accurate numbers here.

I believe I read something about how Zack & Wiki surpassed Capcom's expectations in terms of sales, but I can't find the article right now. If I find it I'll post it here later, I'm almost sure about it though.

I know this is a lot I am asking, but I was not sure how to really scale it down into something simple or more simple.

Well they are making another Elebits so I guess they think it's worth it.

I guess you have to work a lot with assumptions here.

Assume average price of a wii title.
Assume percentage of average price a low budget title costs.
Assume how much money of each game sold goes to the developer/ publisher

....

then you can build your own case still based on guesswork but on rather controllable guesswork...

Who can name these averages though?

Regarding Zack & Wiki again, I found this thread at Capcom's forum:

http://www.capcom.com/BBS/showthread.php?t=25019&highlight=zack+wiki+sales+expectations

It's not conclusive but it does seem like Z&W has already hit their expectations (and it continues to sell, I bought it yesterday for example :P).

I think the estimate of game development costs tend to be misleading because a (unusually) simple game like Brain Training can be developed by a handful of developers over a couple of months whereas a more complicated game like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King probably takes a much larger development team working for far longer.

In general, I would say it would be a good idea to estimate an average development cost of $500,000 to $1,000,000 for a WiiWare/XBox Live Arcade game and $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 for a budget priced disc game. At the same time I would expect developers would be happy if they recovered twice the development cost for these games being that their marketing costs are low. Assuming $5 to $10 revenue from an WiiWare/XBox Live Arcade game (and revenue of $10 to $20 for a budget priced disc based game) developers would be (very) happy with sales in the 100,000 to 400,000 range.

I heard last gen. titles on the average game so its qualified, that 100,000 sales was the break even point on most games! the nex gen console like PS3 and 360's mark is up tp 500,000 units.
Remember it all depends on the individual game, MGS4 will need over million but thats not a problem. So if its shovelware for the wii and they get 100,000 in sale a dev's happy! Sorry I dont remeber the link that discussed the averages! if I find it I'll post it!