Marvelous were so happy with the sales they threw a party.

You don't throw a party for losing money, or breaking even.

Elebits i'd say made a proft, since it was what convinced them to try Dewy.

Dewy almost surely lost them money though.

That is a shame for Dewy. It really is a pretty decent game, surely better than most low budget games out there. The tilt mechanics on it are spot on and the use of environment change affects is pretty cool.

You have to remember as well that for games that sell low quantities there is a huge difference between sold and shipped. No More heroes has only sold around 200k so far, but it's shipped 400k. Enough to make a profit.

Whereas on a huge sales game like Halo 3 if they have sold 7million then the difference between sold and shipped will be much smaller as a percentage.

I actually think that for most low budget games whether they sell a single copy or not is irrelvant. I imagine they make it at a cost where the inital shipment is enough to at least break even. So if they have to ship anymore or not doesn't matter. I would say that is definetly the case for games made by Data Design, like London taxi or there super basic sports games.

For NMH as well it's inital shipment was enough to make a profit. So my guess is that for low budget games sales are only important if they
1: Plan on making a sequel and so would need shops to order the same amount again.
Or
2: Sales are high enough that the initial shipment gets sold out and they send out more, making a healthy profit.

My guess (using that word a lot) for those titles is
Elebits, NMH, Z+W all made a good profit
Dewy probably managed to break even at least off initial shipment.
Nights again probably managed to break even off initial shipment.

However going by sales I would say don't expect a sequel to nights or dewy.

I just wish there was a way to track what needs to be sold or even shipped for some of these games to break even or make a profit. It would be nice to see somewhere that says Dewy needed to ship 200k to make a profit and then we see that it has only sold 70k. Maybe I am asking too much here, but it is just interesting to me none the less.