Oh, Finn, you would be surprised by how game companies are often run. One that I didn't work for, but am very familiar with, is actually budgeting for all of their games to sell 5 million copies on launch quarter. They actually spend that much developing each game - so that even if their last game was a 2 million seller, they LOST money on it.
There's this belief, at least in North American studios, that all a company has to do is sell 'Halo Numbers' once, and they're set for life, so they'll bet the farm on each title, spend huge amounts on development and marketing - while not even paying attention to the fact that even Halo 3 lost money at the end of the day.
So, when you have this 'vegas' mindset it's not surprising that, at some point, the bank is going to want the debts called. That is what's killing the industry, despite it making so much money - the development and publishing hosues are simply spending far far more than they take in.
