I agree with you 100%. The problem is that most Wii/DS/PSP games cost very little to develop. The HD twins probably cost way more, but even then except a few projects I doubt that many games pass the 10 million budget line today...

Yes, last gen a game was overall successful, and except if it had a multi-million advertisement campaign, selling 300-500k meant that it was pretty much a solid success...

For me is flop means that there was a heavy investment... i.e. advertising and development budget and it failed to meet expectations by a large amount.

A flop is a game that doesn't make money, that it all. Depending on the games budget the number it needs to sell fluctuates but that number is usually in the 500-750k range.

I blame Wii Fit.
I also blame Halo3 and GeoW.

Nintendo and Microsoft have spent far more money and time advertising this generation (rumored 40 million for Wii Fit alone) . It seems it has inflated everyones expectations of what sales should be.

Think this is something that varies from game to game and budget to budget.

This.

What constitutes as a flop, is going to be subjective from person to person.  It will undoubtably be more vocal on the internet.

However, with that said, I myself agree with Bardic.  All that matters is the people of these companies who develop/produce/market/etc these games think of what makes a flop, or what makes a game seem a success.  Very scenerio driven. 

Ex. Profit/Loss, Revenue/Cost, New IP/Sequel, Marketed/Non Marketed, Retail/Download, etc.

Great thread.

This (for all those just quoting me and may have missed this awesome post)

The problem is alot of people call a game a flop because of the reason u stated

I mean games like Haze,Lair, GTA chinatown are considered flops

Hell some people say MH Tri is a flop and it sold close to a million XD

250k was a hit last gen...but game costs have gone up exponentially, as has userbase of video game players.

Those factored together means that 250k just isn't that much.

Good thread. I think you hit it on the nail but I'll take it a step further. The reason they call games a flop or not is simply to further their own opinion about a certain game, system, or brand. Really when I see people calling things a flop or not it is always deeply rooted in some personal bias. Very rarely do I see people actually analytically taking sales, estimated production values, and company expectations to see whether or not they made a profit. Best example of this was obviously Monster Hunter 3 in Japan on Wii. The idea has been completely corrupted by those who have no idea what they are talking about just like the hardcore and casual terms.

Really people need to profess some Socratic Wisdom and simply state they have no freaking idea instead of acting like they do. Whether it was successful or not can easily be found out by the company's future plans and if you want to try to figure it out yourself simply looking at the numbers isn't logical.

We need to start looking at the success ratio at a more rational perspective rather than "fire and brimstone" terminology. Good write up Maxwell.