most publishers expect 1 million to bring in noticable profit so in order for noticable profit to even thnk of happening i think they need to sell about 700k - 800k.

imho - Halo 3 was a Big Budget Disaster, not in profits or sales but in quality. The game just completely sucks versus the first two.

 Hey, we're only talking about REAL games here.

And yeah, Shenmue deserves a place up there. It didn't recoup its production budget, let alone the massive advertising budget it received, and the sequel didn't do much better. Still, it was an interesting enough game for its time, so I feel a little bad about that. 

Well quality is far more subjective and more open to debate than actual empirical objective data.    Even your "most publishers expect 1 million" point is fallacious because not all development and marketing budgets are the same.    In fact, the arbitrary 1 milion unit marker is our own media's personal opinion that has seeped into the minds of gamers as fact.  Some games may require far more than a million to even cover development costs alone while far less could be true for others.

1 Million.... for your average game. Not the huge blockbusters.

I saw this yesterday, great article.

Shenmue is a horrid game...just my opinion (I know it goes against the popular one).

E.T. actually was only programmed by one person in a mere five weeks. Actually, considering that, he did a pretty decent job. Still not a good game, but given the time he was given to make it it's not bad.