Developer of Conduit 2 rubbishes 'misnomer' of the magic million-unit figure...

When is a game considered a success? Venture into most corners of the internet and the figure one million units is bandied around quite a bit. It does seem to be the case; we do tend to only hear of a game's "commercial success" when it passes that magic mark. But is this necessarily fair?

Unequivocally not, according to Eric Nofsinger. Speaking to Eurogamer, the chief creative officer of the Conduit franchise hit out at the notion of this industry-wide benchmark.

"That's a misnomer in our industry. By and large people look at it and they say, if it's not a million unit seller it's a flop. That's preposterous. Whatever the product is, 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.

"The biggest misconception of consumers of the industry is that million-unit benchmark... When you really look at the number of games a year that sell over a million units, it's almost none of them. If that really were the minimum bar for a success, the game industry would be gone in under a year. 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. Although it was a considerable budget for a Wii title, it was not the kind of budget a Gears of War had."

Nofsinger added that High Voltage would be "high-fiving each other" if Conduit 2 sold as well as its predecessor, though he went on to say he personally believes it will perform better.

After many delays, Conduit 2 is due to launch in North America in April. A European release is now expected around the same time.