I think we're in the process of seeing the first major financial disaster of this new generation in Stranglehold. Thare are three things that drive sales, I think:

1) Hype and press

2) Great  reviews

3) Word of mouth

Heavenly Sword and especially Lair are two recent games that may not sell enormously well because of their good-but-not-great and bad reviews (respectively), but they both have a lot of hype and console exclusives always get some buzz simply for that reason alone.

But thus far, Stranglehold has none of this. It didn't get a lot of hype (comparatively, of course) and it's getting okay to pretty good reviews (75 on metacritic), and is multiplatform, which tends to cut down on the buzz -- unless word of mouth becomes amazingly positive, I think we could be looking at the first major dud of this new, extremely expensive era.

According to Midway, the game cost 25 million+ dollars to produce, which is two and a half times as much as Twilight Princess cost, as an example.  

25 million? wow, i would expect 85+ for such a expensive game, just wow

Well, for history's sake, Stranglehold will be the first game to have a pack-in movie, and for a bonus the game is the direct sequel to the movie.  Of course, that's only the PS3 collector's edition.

Since I've decided not to buy the game and just rent the movie, the game does have a lot less luster than it did before.  I hope the PS3 version doesn't completely flop because of its later release date and competition from Heavenly Sword and Warhawk. 

What about the Darkness. It's numbers haven't exactly been thrilling.

I'll wait and see on Strangle Hold, but it might pull some decent numbers.

twice the cost of TP? i'm sure TP cost more than $12.5 mln... it took so many years to develop, for starters.

i always wonder if all those ps3/360 titles really cost $15-$20mln+ to develop as the studios claim.

Holy crapola, 25m?

My opinion of this game from the start was something in the vicinity of "dried up turd on a bad stretch of road"....my apologies to anyone who is looking forward to it, but thats my honest opinion.

Anyways, I hadn't expected reviews to be this high, so I thought the game was doing ok...but at 25m, they need to sell how many copies? Something like 420k if you assess all $60 as profit, but after the case, manual, disc, shipping, and retail markup (albeit a small markup) I would figure the final profit to be somewhere around $45-48 on the PS3 version and $52-55 on the 360. So weighting that for install base the average profit should be something like $52 which would mean they need about 480k copies.

I think they will likely break even, but the goal of this sort of venture is to make money. As for the effect on the industry? I don't know if this one instance will scare a bunch of devs away, but I do think it will be added to a list and it will get them to keep an eye out for more warning signs.

PS - Prices and install bases are based on US numbers, assessment of productions costs are entirely arbitrary.

I have been predicting a flop for a while now. I also predicted that when it flops, Midway is going bankrupt. If they're lucky, they will get picked up by EA. I'll probably rent the game for 360 at some point, but I have no intention of purchasing it, and I can't say I have actually met anyone who does want to purchase it...

 TP is basically a GC and they rarely exceeded development and marketing costs above a few million.

Scratch that: Stranglehold's costs were 30 million.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/playstation-3/stranglehold-has-a-30-million-price-tag-285648.php 

And yes, Twilight Princess cost ~10/11 million to produce: I can't find any links to confirm or deny that, but I'm quite sure that was the cost. 

I used TP because it's presumably a similar type of game: long, epic, "hardcore" in nature. I could have used, say, Wii Play, but that wouldn't be a fair comparison. That's like comparing Super Stardust to Stranglehold.  

It is another Midway game... From the demo I have found the destructable environment to wear off really fast. After, that it becomes a run of the mill shooter.

Blitz the League + Hour of Victory + Stranglehold + Blacksite Area 51 = Financial disasters...

Lucky they are also building Unreal Tournament III to bail them all out. I don't see this game doing anything great. Hopefully I get proven wrong though.