Ok, it's been said time and time again lately, everything that doesn't sell gangbusters is a flop.  But honestly what do you think counts as a "flop"?  Is it just low sales?  Expectations vs sales?  Profit vs loss? And the bigger question with many games across all platforms not having gangbuster sales first day or week but crawling up to a million seller status could those games be considdered "flops", can you even determine a "flop" based off first day sales?

My personal feelings: This generation has had so many games that reach sales beyond anything from previous generations that people has had their views skewed very badly.  Last generation 250k was a hit, 500k was enough to start thinking of a sequel, and a million was great.  Now it's almost as if you've got a somewhat wanted game it has to hit 2 million or its a "flop".

I really don't call games flops no matter their sales, either they sell enough to cover the companies cost and start making them money, or it doesn't.  This is the only thing I can think of why people care so much about game sales, I personally like seeing companies succeed and do great and love seeing their games get good enough sales to make their companies money so they can give us bigger and better games. 

Honestly this huge craze of "It's a flop" is kinda old and getting irritating by the day.  The other day I saw a prediction of LBP PSP selling 250k lifetime (which is a tad low in my opinion) but saying it'd be a "flop", when 250k should be well enough to cover costs and make a nice profit especially for a PSP game, it doesn't have a 20 million dollar budget with huge teams developing it, it simply doesn't take that much.  But this all got me thinking "since when did selling a quarter million copies become a bad thing?  That means a lot of people are playing your game"

In the end even the best games in the world don't sell at incredible levels, but enough to garner a lot of love, and new games.

This thread is a flop!

Edit : though it might get legs, so far not much comments.

Simple, if it doesn't meet my expectations its a flop.

And since when do personal expectations mean anything of significance to other people? Why express it in such a negative way in the first place?

Because "flop" is easier to say than "didn't meet my expectations", just as "lol" is easier to say than "I laughed so much!".

I'm not saying that I think it's right, but I think this is one of the reasons for why it's become "popular" so to speak.

You will be surprised what people consider a flop. People think Assassin's creed  flopped when it sold close to 8 million copies.

The game might not meet people's expectations but if publishers are rolling around in your cash, the game succeeded in their view.

For most people calling a game a flop means that it didn't surprise them. If a game explodes and hits a million on DS/PSP then people will be surprised and see it as a success. They misuse the word 'flop' to express their feelings that the game isn't a huge hit.

In my opinion, a flop is something that doesn't reach expectations, whether it be sales volume or profit.

Everyone who says "flop" here either:

1. Isn't satisfied with the game, ignoring sales.

2. When internet hype fails to sell gangbuster units.

3. Likes to be negative towards _______ competitive console.

These three reasons are the main things that I see, it makes having a civil and intelligent discussion about game sales nigh impossible.

I agree with the general "doesn't reach expectations" formula, but I'd add a few other possible goals that developers/publishers might have:

- showcasing a hardware peripheral or software tool, as e.g. an engine.

- estabilishing commercial relationships with a publisher and/or builiding cred for future projects.

Because of these goals, even with low sales and low profit -or even short-term losses- a game might not be a flop. That's the case, I think, of The Conduit.