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Depends on the development costs, marketing, etc.

Basically the second they make a cent over the costs they have made money.

The simple formula would be cost of game divided by cost per copy of game to get copies sold to break even, then add one more copy to add some profit from the whole venture.

But of course its not that simple, as you'd need to factor in how the money from each copy is split to work out when each party involved is going to make money from their investment.

Factor 5 put out a graph a little while ago that put the initial cost of LAIR at a lower bound of $12 million. Using it as a benchmark and dividing by $60, that means they have to sell an absolute minimum of 200,000 copies to break even. Of course, I'm guessing that figure is fairly understated, as there is no way developers receive the full $60 on each game sale.

I always though it must sell more than half of what the company shipped to retailers to make a good profit...

All depens on development costs.

Depends.

it varies I'd say...depending on the development cost, but don't forget about advertising.

There are so many variables that have to be considered such as shipping costs, a store's cut of the game, advertisements, the disc and packaging itself. Also, a game may cost $60 at release but eventually, it will drop in price. You would have to know how many copies were sold at each price point.

If I had to guess, Namco's claim of 500,000 sounds about right for an exclusive PS3 game, depending on the size and work involved of course.

That being said, only a small handful of PS3 games have likely made profit. That's why the PS3 will see very few exclusives.

Depends on a lot of factors ...

I know a competitor of Pop-Cap games that will break even after 10,000 sales and (at the same time) due to development and marketing costs I doubt Grand Theft Auto 4 became profitable until they sold 5,000,000 copies.

I've heard that GTA IV cost $100 million to make. It costs $60.00 and $80.00 (for the special edition) in stores, and I've heard that movies need to double their production costs to make money. So, using the same formula, GTA IV probably need to sell between 3.5 million and 4 million copies which it did to make a profit. (Not sure if there were extra costs thrown in there for the fact that it was developed on two consoles).