It's not just about making a small profit. Certain games like GTA, Halo, MW, Mario are expected to do a lot more than just make a profit. They are expected to make massive profit to fund the unprofitable portions of the company. It is not a success when these games just make a profit, they need to make obscene amounts of profit to be considered successful.
Anyone can guess. It takes no effort to throw out lots of predictions and have some of them be correct. You are not and wiser or better for having your guesses be right. Even a blind man can hit the bullseye.