I was about do another "What was wrong with..." article in connection Junction Point closing up, which made Epic Mickey 2.  But then, my doing this is getting to be old actually.  It is getting to be too many studios and titles I can ask about.  I could then have people argue the "bad marketing" instant response, which seems to be normal, but it has to be deeper than that.

So, rather than do things this way, let me ask the opposite here.  One could name names, but I think it would be better to look at what is common between them and ask... So, exactly what game studios are remaining profitable and staying open?  What do they have in common?  It isn't just "well they do FPS" because FPS's seem to sell well at the top mainly, and if you crank one out, good chance it loses money.  Maybe FPS is part of it, but what else is there?  Can anyone categorize the attributes between what is actually selling vs not, and is there any chance at all of even getting a new IP off the ground these days and having it last?

I blame renting and borrowing for the Death of Darksiders. I'm guilty of it as well. It's a one playthrough game, and unfortunately in this economy not many people can shell out $60 for that kind of game. As for the Epic Mickey developers, they just made a bad game trying to cash in on the success of the first release, so I'm glad they shut down...

Ones that make shit MOBA games or have a lot of anime licenses.

What the heck happened to Epic Mickey 2?  I thought it was supposed to improve on the original..  Oh well...

But still, one can't end up saying studios are closing merely on lack of quality alone.  Spec Ops: The Line got critical praise and ended up doing poorly saleswise.

The ones that make good games. (good as in making money)

Studios making games that can be profitable with 100k sales are the ones staying open. There are a few big-shot publishers selling millions of games, but that's not a sustainable business model for most developers. This is why indie studios are doing so well -- they keep their overhead down.

If you take a look at Epic Mickey 2... they probably could have made the same game for Wii only with very little budget, reusing a lot of assets from the first game. But instead they ported it to three other consoles, all of them HD consoles at that, and PC. Maybe they still would have lost money, maybe they still would have closed. But I'd wager that whatever they spent on that Wii U port, it wasn't worth it, not for 80k sales. PS3 with 210k isn't much better, nor 360 with 260k.

Nintendo-owned studios, both internal and external

This is true. I guess it's a balence between commerical and critical success, with more emphasis on sales. Unfortunatley for Epic Mickey 2, it was bad sales and review wise. 
And it's a shame that Spec ops didn't sell well. Would have loved to see a sequel or another game from the same guys that had a great story.

It's the same as anything. It's about finding a niche to fill and then differentiating your product.

What I really don't understand about the gaming industry is the succeed-then-sell-out model. I don't see how that's better for a publisher than them hiring their own teams and starting their own studios. I suppose you could say that they're after successful IPs more than the studios themselves, but for the most part that's only a short-term win.

A lot of what I've seen with studios closing is mismanagement. They get too big, too quickly. You read about relatively new studios laying off hundreds of people and you just know that the loans must have been massive. Smaller studios that focus on downloadable games are the future for independent developers. Only the big publishers can really afford the big releases.

i wanna see game freak's number....must be big