High Voltage: million unit milestone "preposterous"

High Voltage's Eric Nofsinger has pooh-poohed the industry's excitement over million-units milestones, claiming The Conduit 2 need only equal its "flop" precursor to be a success.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Nofsinger tackled the question of success versus failure.

"People look at it and they say, if it's not a million unit seller it's a flop. That's preposterous," he said. "If that really were the minimum bar for a success, the game industry would be gone in under a year."

The creative director said that of successful major releases, "almost none of them" sell a million units or more.

"There are thousands of games released that don't sell a million units. There are like 10 games a year that sell over a million units. But if you can sell a few hundred thousand copies – 300, 400 thousand copies, which is in the range that we did – we made money off that. We did well."

In case the message didn't come through, Nofsinger put the economics in the most basic terms.

"If it costs you less to make than you end up making off the thing, you make profit. As long as the profit margin is strong enough, then you get enough of a return and you can make another."

That's what The Conduit did, despite accusations of flopping, and High Voltage will be happy to do it again.

"If we sold the exact same number of units as we sold with Conduit 1, we'd be high-fiving each other. But I think we'll do better."

Thanks, GoNintendo.