I'm really bad at math but 3 million copies of Tomb Raider at $45 a pop (to be fair, I'm sure a lot of people paid $60 for it)
Is like $135 million dollars
If a Hollywood movie budget is that high and it makes $30 million back (not including dvd sales etc), it's considered a flop
So either game budgets are overly bloated, which is true, or publishers need to redefine what they could consider to be a 'flop'
If Square-Enix expected the game to be their single source of income for the year then yeah it was a flop
"Veteran analyst Billy Pidgeon says $100m Tomb Raider needs 5 to 10 million sales to be successful" If the budget was $100 million then shouldn't $135 million be a good profit? Not to mention, the way I did the math setting the price at $45 for each copy is skewed, a lot bought it for $60 which would add up to $180 million if everyone paid $60