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Forums - Sales - Can we please re-define the term FLOP

Tallgeese101 on 15 November 2009
Tankman said:
A flop should be called a flop if the developers didn't make a profit. If they are in the red after sales...it should be a flop. Same goes for anyone else involved in the game.

QFT

 

KZ2 has only sold around 2m, if it made $15 on each sale that is $30m.

I think it cost a lot more than it generated.



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Munkeh111 on 15 November 2009
Tallgeese101 said:
Tankman said:
A flop should be called a flop if the developers didn't make a profit. If they are in the red after sales...it should be a flop. Same goes for anyone else involved in the game.

QFT

 

KZ2 has only sold around 2m, if it made $15 on each sale that is $30m.

I think it cost a lot more than it generated.

Well it made closer to $20-$30 per game so between $40m and $60m so far



silicon on 15 November 2009

I don't consider them flops.



Barozi on 15 November 2009

LBP is still a flop. Not sales wise, but it was supposed to move tons of hardware and attract a new crowd of casual gamers.

Fell short of expectations....yes that's a good definition of a flop.
You could even call the DS version of GTA Chinatown Wars a flop. It was the most expensive handheld GTA game Rockstar ever made and it sold only fraction of the previous PSP games.
However The PSP version is obviously the bigger flop.



Grimes on 15 November 2009
ChrisIsNotSexy said:
Games that dont bring enough profit to complete the development costs,and after that a fair ammount of additional profit.

Some games need to do much more than this. For example GTAIV needed to bring in huge amounts of profits or T2 would have been in big trouble. Certain franchises not only need to bring in some profit, but they have to bring in enough profit to support the rest of the company that doesn't make profit.



Anyone can guess. It takes no effort to throw out lots of predictions and have some of them be correct. You are not and wiser or better for having your guesses be right. Even a blind man can hit the bullseye.

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Kantor on 15 November 2009

According to Wikipedia, this seems to be the definition of a flop:

If f:X→Y is a morphism, and K is the canonical bundle of X, then the relative canonical ring of f is

\oplus_m f_*(O_X(mK))

and is a sheaf of graded algebras over the sheaf OY of regular functions on Y. The blowup f+

f^+:X^+= Proj(\oplus_m f_*(O_X(mK)))\mapsto Y

of Y along the relative canonical ring is a morphism to Y. If the relative canonical ring is finitely generated (as an algebra over OY) then the morphism f+ is called the flip of f if −K is relatively ample, and the flop of f if K is relatively trivial. (Sometimes the induced birational morphism from X to X+ is called a flip or flop.)

In applications, f is often a small contraction of an extremal ray, which implies several extra properties:

* The exceptional sets of both maps f and f+ have codimension at least 2,
* X and X+ only have mild singularities, such as terminal singularities.
* f and f+ are birational morphisms onto Y, which is normal and projective.
* All curves in the fibers of f and f+ are numerically proportional.



(Former) Lead Moderator and (Eternal) VGC Detective

Kantor on 15 November 2009
Barozi said:
LBP is still a flop. Not sales wise, but it was supposed to move tons of hardware and attract a new crowd of casual gamers.

Fell short of expectations....yes that's a good definition of a flop.
You could even call the DS version of GTA Chinatown Wars a flop. It was the most expensive handheld GTA game Rockstar ever made and it sold only fraction of the previous PSP games.
However The PSP version is obviously the bigger flop.

So a cheap game expected to sell 15 million which sells 10 million is a flop.

And an expensive game expected to sell 1 million which sells 1.5 million isn't?

That's pretty flawed.



(Former) Lead Moderator and (Eternal) VGC Detective

Porcupine_I on 15 November 2009
Kantor said:
According to Wikipedia, this seems to be the definition of a flop:

If f:X→Y is a morphism, and K is the canonical bundle of X, then the relative canonical ring of f is

oplus_m f_*(O_X(mK))

and is a sheaf of graded algebras over the sheaf OY of regular functions on Y. The blowup f+

f^+:X^+= Proj(oplus_m f_*(O_X(mK)))mapsto Y

of Y along the relative canonical ring is a morphism to Y. If the relative canonical ring is finitely generated (as an algebra over OY) then the morphism f+ is called the flip of f if −K is relatively ample, and the flop of f if K is relatively trivial. (Sometimes the induced birational morphism from X to X+ is called a flip or flop.)

In applications, f is often a small contraction of an extremal ray, which implies several extra properties:

* The exceptional sets of both maps f and f+ have codimension at least 2,
* X and X+ only have mild singularities, such as terminal singularities.
* f and f+ are birational morphisms onto Y, which is normal and projective.
* All curves in the fibers of f and f+ are numerically proportional.

yeah! what he said!



“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”

- George Orwell, ‘1984’

palancas7 on 15 November 2009
Kantor said:
According to Wikipedia, this seems to be the definition of a flop:

If f:X→Y is a morphism, and K is the canonical bundle of X, then the relative canonical ring of f is

oplus_m f_*(O_X(mK))

and is a sheaf of graded algebras over the sheaf OY of regular functions on Y. The blowup f+

f^+:X^+= Proj(oplus_m f_*(O_X(mK)))mapsto Y

of Y along the relative canonical ring is a morphism to Y. If the relative canonical ring is finitely generated (as an algebra over OY) then the morphism f+ is called the flip of f if −K is relatively ample, and the flop of f if K is relatively trivial. (Sometimes the induced birational morphism from X to X+ is called a flip or flop.)

In applications, f is often a small contraction of an extremal ray, which implies several extra properties:

* The exceptional sets of both maps f and f+ have codimension at least 2,
* X and X+ only have mild singularities, such as terminal singularities.
* f and f+ are birational morphisms onto Y, which is normal and projective.
* All curves in the fibers of f and f+ are numerically proportional.

My head...



 

Barozi on 15 November 2009
Kantor said:
Barozi said:
LBP is still a flop. Not sales wise, but it was supposed to move tons of hardware and attract a new crowd of casual gamers.

Fell short of expectations....yes that's a good definition of a flop.
You could even call the DS version of GTA Chinatown Wars a flop. It was the most expensive handheld GTA game Rockstar ever made and it sold only fraction of the previous PSP games.
However The PSP version is obviously the bigger flop.

So a cheap game expected to sell 15 million which sells 10 million is a flop.

And an expensive game expected to sell 1 million which sells 1.5 million isn't?

That's pretty flawed.

What sane human being would even expect huge numbers from a cheap game if he wasn't 100% sure ?

If it really sells only 2/3 of the expected result (publisher's or developer's estimates), then it's certainly a flop. You could argue if the flop is the game itself or the guys who made that estimate

Animal Crossing Wii might be a good example for that although I don't know what the initial expectations were, but I'm pretty sure they were much higher than the actual sales.

 

However it's clear that in the end there must be different categories of flops.