The phrase "hits driven business" gets thrown around a lot these days, but in the case of video games it really is true. Creating video games and knowing what will actually lead to commercial success is not exactly a perfect science. There's no magic formula, and unfortunately that means game development nowadays is very, very risky. Millions upon millions of dollars can be invested in a game project, and sometimes the company is lucky to break even, let alone make a profit.

In fact, according to Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR) – as reported by Forbes – roughly 20 percent of video games that make it to market are actually profitable. To think that 80 percent of video games only break even or lose money for publishers is somewhat alarming. Geoffrey Zatkin, who designed games for 11 years before co-founding EEDAR, noted, "Every game I have ever worked on, we've gone in blind as to which features would sell the game better." [Update: Forbes had reported that only four percent of games that make it to market are profitable, but the real statistic, EEDAR said in an email to us, is that four percent of games that start production make a profit while 20 percent of finished products are profitable.]

Reworking or redesigning parts of a game can comprise 60 percent of a game's budget, according to EEDAR. Sometimes including an extra feature or mode can really make a difference but other times it might not. Zatkin, for example, said that not knowing for sure if the inclusion of multiplayer would be worth an extra $500,000 "would scare the crap out of me."

"No one or two things can determine the success or failure of a game," Zatkin noted. But a number of factors can point to a greater chance of success, such as release timing, the developer's pedigree, the genre, the platform(s) and the promise of downloadable content.