[tracker1]

And out of the 800 new indie games a month, how many are breakout successes and sell even 10k copies? That's what is rare, not that indie games are rare, but having a success (like winning the lottery) is relatively rare.

At 10k new indie games a year, maybe a dozen gross over a million. A larger studio can't afford those kind of odds. That said, they should be able to make more games with a better focus on gameplay and a bit less on leading tech graphics.

[vunderba]

This. And honestly, 10k sales is the bare minimum. Even if you’re a solo dev with no team and you handle everything yourself (programming, sound, music, art, marketing) to keep costs down, you’re still looking at around 6–12 months of work.

Most indie games don’t sell for more than $10 USD, but let’s be generous and say you manage to convince your audience to pay $20.

  Total: 200,000 USD
  After Steam Cut: 140,000 USD

And now you need to get lightning to strike every year to maintain your annual income so you can retire before you're Methuselah.

Could you work on the game part-time while holding down a full-time job? Sure, but you've got to have some iron stamina to want to sit in front of a computer for another 4 hours after a full day of work. Furthermore, not being able to focus on the game means dev might take significantly longer.

[tracker1]

I was thinking 10K copies as a metric for even modest "success" for a game, but you're right about the expenses and income... That said, depending on where you live, that's a pretty good income.

[johndough]

In 2021, only the top 8 % of games sold 10k copies or more, so if you were among them, you were quite successful.

Source: https://app.sensortower.com/vgi/insights/article/video-game-...

In addition, a large fraction of those 8 % were probably games by AAA studios, so your chances as an indie dev are even lower.