Me and a few of my friends who are also hardcore gamers were debating as to what is considered a success in sales for a game. We all agreed that it greatly depends on how high profiled the game is dues to the developement budget.

Anyway, I came to the conclusion of the following:

Low Profile (ex: Terminator Salvation)- success 300k to 500k

Medium Profile (ex: Star Wars: TFU)- success 1.2 m to 1.5 m

High Profile (ex: Fallout 3)- success 2 m to 2.5 m

Of coarse there are always exceptions. Where games like Halo 3 and MGS4 cost more to make than 95% of the games on the market, I don't beleive they could be considered successes unless they sold a minium of 4 m copies.

Just wanted the communities thoughts on what is considered a successful game sales wise. Just so than everyone knows, I know it's considered a success as a business if you make profit. I'm asking along the lines of when you see sales of a game what do you consider to be a success in contingent to it's level of hype and popularity prior to release

Development budget doesn't correlate directly with hype. I guarantee you that Terminator Salvation will be a massive flop at the range you gave (same with Star Wars: TFU if you're talking about across all platforms).

you can see it a couple of ways.
i see it as the company turning any kind of profit.

but the funniest way to see it is through the eyes of a fanboy.
Gran Turismo has to sell over 10,000,000 to be considered good. forza 3 has too sell more than gran turismo.

Good sells is when you make your money back and get tons of more money. Its basicly gambleing. You put money in and see how much comes out. Also the sales don't matter if the buget is really all that matters. 2 games can sell the same amount but one will have better sales due to one being more profitable

Good Sales = X Title Which Sells 1 Unit beyond the units need to cover Development + Marketing Cost + Publisher + Big 3 fees

In other words, few HD games have good sales.

I would qualify good sales as sales that make a decent return on the investment. Simply making a slight profit really isn't enough in business. Otherwise I'd just put that money in the bank for a few years.

Well as long as the game makes the targeted profit then the sales are a success.

It's hard to give a concrete number, it's too variable.

I will, however, say that on an HD console, Shooter > Action > JRPG (high profile) > Adventure > WRPG > JRPG (low profile) > Strategy.

Depends on the point of view.

For the developer the game is a succes the moment it turns a profit/returns decently the investment.

From the "journalist" point of view the game has to be critically acclaimed - or the ludicrous "+80%" on Metacritic.

Then there's the forums/fanboys. Us. And this is completely arbitrary. Dsister said it best. GT5 is a success when it sells over 10 mill + a few million PS3's. Forza is a succes when it matches or beats GT5. Zelda is a success when it comes close to Ocarina of time number. No More heroes a success when it get's close to 500K etc...