Not to bright pun aimed ad personam. There are clear standards to decide objectively if the game was successful.
Taking budget in to consideration 500.000 units sold is not a success for PoE.
How do you know that? I don't have much stake in the *argument.* Of course, I *want* PoE to have done well in terms of sales and sustainability, but the argument of whether it has or not isn't particularly important to me. I figure if it has, we'll know by what Obsidian *does.* However, from the point of view of folks saying 500k is a success or a failure in light of budgeting, how do people know?
We can't tell if Poe was a success, but we can compare it to the competition.
And we know that Wasteland 2 managed similar numbers despite lower KS budget, smaller names and worse reception.