The game may still turn a profit just not that much and when you consider the sales will probably come in at something like 6m total LT I can see why the higher ups would be unhappy as that is a low return for what was put into the game. The industry is going to implode on the whole AAA development costs, they need to start being more cost efficient.
Edit: Reading some of the development details I can see why things erupted, Kojima is artistic in his approach but the problem is that AAA costs stack up hard, an example is the game was consistently delayed due to things like him hiring musicians to make hundreds of songs of which he'd use only one because he deemed the others weren't perfect. They'd then be paid even more to create even more tracks, it also begs the question how much more does having Sutherland cost then David Hayter.
