I tried to point out that talking about the profitability of Chinatown Wars is pretty much impossible way back in the thread. Budget price around the holidays means each copy sold was probably making about half of what it would have at release. On the other hand, the game probably didn't have a huge budget -- though it was advertised a good amount. Plus, porting a 2D game to iPhone and PSP probably wasn't too hard. The game has topped the App Store charts, so it must be doing well there. Plus, we don't even have PSN sales for it, which could add significantly to the total judging by those GT psp sales (which I'd never actually heard about before seeing them in this thread).
I doubt there are many games that go down to clearance price within several months of release and are clearly successful in the publisher's eyes and profitable. Around breaking even, sure. Usually that means retailers are still trying to sell off old stock and not ordering any new copies, which means the game failed to meet with retailers' and publishers' expectations and have normal sell through. I could be totally wrong, though. I'm sure every publisher has their own strategies.
