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

Cypher1980 on 15 November 2009

Any game that fails to cover development costs including Upfront investment by console manufacturers (to cover launch titles) is a FLOP (eg LAIR)

Any game that meets dev costs but only achieves a 20 percent return on investment as profit can be called a QUALIFIED FLOP (eg LBP)

Any game that meets dev costs but achieves less than a 40 percent return on investment as profit can be called a QUALIFIED SUCCESS (eg DEAD SPACE)

As above but 40 - 100 percent profit is called a SUCCESS (eg UNCHARTED)

As above but over 100 percent profit is called a HIT (eg MGS4)

As above but over 200 percent profit is called an OUT and OUT HIT (eg GTA IV, HALO 3)



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Cypher1980 on 15 November 2009

Oh Sorry feel free to argue moving the goal posts etc

I apologise in advance if the games I chose ruffle feathers !
I appreciate many are still selling well so maybe a cap of within 12 months of launch should be added



wholikeswood 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.

Absolute garbage.

Just because one or two crazy posters said it would shift a ton of hardware, doesn't give you the right to ascribe that belief to the whole forum or assert that it was "supposed to" do X or Y.



Kantor on 15 November 2009
Cypher1980 said:
Any game that fails to cover development costs including Upfront investment by console manufacturers (to cover launch titles) is a FLOP (eg LAIR)

Any game that meets dev costs but only achieves a 20 percent return on investment as profit can be called a QUALIFIED FLOP (eg LBP)

Any game that meets dev costs but achieves less than a 40 percent return on investment as profit can be called a QUALIFIED SUCCESS (eg DEAD SPACE)

As above but 40 - 100 percent profit is called a SUCCESS (eg UNCHARTED)

As above but over 100 percent profit is called a HIT (eg MGS4)

As above but over 200 percent profit is called an OUT and OUT HIT (eg GTA IV, HALO 3)

LBP made a 20% profit with 2.5 million sales?

With 40 people on the dev team?



(Former) Lead Moderator and (Eternal) VGC Detective

Kantor on 15 November 2009
Barozi said:
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.

Just as an example, the first two games I thought of for each category:

Cheap game: NSMBWii

Expensive game: Heavy Rain.

Though NSMBWii is expected to sell more than 15 million and HR is expected to sell less.



(Former) Lead Moderator and (Eternal) VGC Detective

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C_Hollomon on 15 November 2009

KZ3 will soon come so KZ2 must not been a flop. I think Forza 3 needs to be bundled to not be called a flop. Right now the sales are ok but I think it needs to sale around 1.5m - 2m to make profit and it will be awhile before it reach those numbers.



Barozi on 15 November 2009
wholikeswood 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.

Absolute garbage.

Just because one or two crazy posters said it would shift a ton of hardware, doesn't give you the right to ascribe that belief to the whole forum or assert that it was "supposed to" do X or Y.

It WAS supposed to shift a lot of hardware. Don't even try to deny that.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/littlebigplanet-will-be-hardware-seller-claims-sony

And it was far more than 1 or 2 crazy posters on the internet lulz



Dno on 15 November 2009
Barozi said:
wholikeswood 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.

Absolute garbage.

Just because one or two crazy posters said it would shift a ton of hardware, doesn't give you the right to ascribe that belief to the whole forum or assert that it was "supposed to" do X or Y.

It WAS supposed to shift a lot of hardware. Don't even try to deny that.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/littlebigplanet-will-be-hardware-seller-claims-sony

And it was far more than 1 or 2 crazy posters on the internet lulz


in that case FM3 is a flop. it was suppose to move hardware and be the BEST sim this gen.. its clearly not. look at any of selnors past threads and people LOTS of people there are saying its better and will sell better.

(i have FM3 and its awesome just trying to prove a point)



wholikeswood on 15 November 2009
Barozi said:
wholikeswood 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.

Absolute garbage.

Just because one or two crazy posters said it would shift a ton of hardware, doesn't give you the right to ascribe that belief to the whole forum or assert that it was "supposed to" do X or Y.

It WAS supposed to shift a lot of hardware. Don't even try to deny that.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/littlebigplanet-will-be-hardware-seller-claims-sony

And it was far more than 1 or 2 crazy posters on the internet lulz

PR speak is different altogether from legitimate predictions.

Nice try, though.



Munkeh111 on 15 November 2009

@ dno, not the best, it was supposed to be DEFINITIVE