I think it has been posted and discussed already 2 or 3 times.
The study claims that only 20% of the games are profitable. But it doesn't say how much profitable.
When a game flop, it can only lose its development cost, while when a game succeed, it can get it back multiple times.
Imagine a company has 5 games that needs to sell 200k each to break even. 4 of them flop completely - 0 copy sold - whereas one is a frank success and sells 1 million. That makes a 20% success rate. And yet, the company itself does not post a lost ( 5 * 200k = 1 million).

I think you make a very valid point. 

Haha. Touché.

Personally, I'd say it's less than one in ten, and I buy more games than most people.

I think the point of this post is another allusion to the Wii and its third party support.  As in this normal trend of game publishing, which hasn't been any different the last two or so generations in terms of the percentage of successful, profit making titles, should somehow mean that all third party developers should be focusing development on the Wii because development costs far less and because it represents half the console market.

But, not everyone wants to publish their best games on the weakest hardware, and not every developer is taken with motion controls (that would be the end consumers who love the Wii).

Non standard controls cut both ways. If a developer is publishing games for any platform other than, or in addition to the Wii, it means that multi-platform game was originally designed with a standard game pad in mind. Adding motion functions after that design process has been completed does not instantly improve the game. It's the main reason why motion controls in most multi-platform games feel tacked on. It's because they are.

"But you can use a standard controller with the Wii?" some are already thinking. Yes, but it's not the standard controller, and more importantly, nobody bought a Wii so they could use a standard controller "to make the games play properly" for games built around game pad play. And if you're one of the motion control pundits who think all games in the near future will be designed around Wii-based controls, I'll just say it's very unlikely and let history be the judge.

The best way to develop for the Wii, is to start with a concept that relies upon the control scheme rather than use it simply because some users find motion controls a novel approach to control mechanics.

Unfortunately, most games for the Wii that take this approach to design are party games or simple games aimed at a casual audience (the majority of the Wii user base), with low budgets and a quick turnaround time.

A high budget, 2-3 year project for the Wii is only likely to be seen directly from Nintendo and its studios. It makes little sense for most third party publishers unless they want to develop Nintendo-like games that aren't actually a part of the Nintendo game world. And that's still far from any guarantee it will sell like a Nintendo published title.

Another interesting question is how bad the games must be that get flat out rejected. If Ninjabread Man is something that actually got the green light, what kind of crap is getting rejected.

I am not suprised since HD gaming is so expensive to develop, the big names and games make profit smaller ones suffer, that's what Japanese developers realised months ago and switched to the wii.

From what I know, the percentage of games that are profitable has been around this level for a very long time ...

What has changed in the past few years is there are far less games being produced, games that lose money are losing far more money, and games that turn a profit are not turning the profit they once did. All of these changes were caused by games becomming more expensive to produce.

Games have definitely been generating more revenue as an industry over that last decade plus, which in turn encouraged additional spending, both in terms of project (and budget) size as well as the number of players in the development/publishing game.

It took the gaming industry from what was a hobbyist's industry into a multibillion dollar part of the entertainment industry.

Revenue may have increased greatly overall, but I think not in proportion to the amount of spending taking place. We may well be on the cusp of seeing many more players in this industry going down, both good and bad.

Bigger risk in this case doesn't necessarily mean bigger potential reward, rather bigger potential for losing more money overall. It's a bad situation that makes one wonder how long it can be sustained if the general public loses interest in gaming again like they did back in '83. It seems less likely since video games are almost as common a form of entertainment as movies or TV, but this still doesn't mean that production budgets can't be rolled back in the near future with enough significant loss, high profile projects.

Ninjabread Man actually made a profit...

This is actually the 3rd time this has been posted...

But this time it at least includes all the information in the original post.