We don't really know the budget for any of those games, do we?

You're right about forgetting about arcades though, I guess!

You know 500k units is pretty low for a AAA game right?

It did have a commercial, I remember seeing it a few times where I live but here it is. It just doesn't show the game itself, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn43glnOJVo

Yeah, no.  I'm gonna have to disagree with you heavily on that one.  You raise some good points in the OP for why those games didn't perform as well as they could have done, which are definitely factors, but ultimately it's the complete lack of marketing that killed all 3 of these games.

So, let's take your example of Starhawk.  You said the campaign was horrible and not worth your time.  That's completely opinion, and although I'll admit too that Starhawk's campaign was underwhelming, but it definitely wasn't bad and you could finish the whole thing in about 5 hours.  But that's not why it didn't sell well.  People didn't say "Oh, it has a short campaign" so they didn't go out to buy it.  Warhawk sold 1 million without any single-player mode.  MAG sold 1.25 million without any single-player mode.  The strength of the multi-player offerings made these games sell, and just like those two, Starhawk boasting an impressive, innovative and enjoyable multi-player (just like Warhawk before it).  But absolutely no-one knew about it.  The beta came and went, and then the game released without a blip.  You can check this reddit thread I posted the day it released, noting the number of replies saying things like "I had no idea this was coming out" or "Why wasn't this advertised?"

Twisted Metal has been a series in decline ever since the second game on PS1 where it peaked, in a genre that has all but disappeared from modern development.  If you look at sales figures for the series, then apart from the blip where Black sold more than 4 (and even then, it was barely an increase despite the fact that Black was heavily praised while 4 was held to be quite average), the trend has undoubtedly been downwards.  I will admit, another big issue with Twisted Metal - that other people have mentioned in the thread - was that it was completely broken at launch.  The online was spotty and worked horribly until about 3 months after launch when they bothered to fix it, but by then it was too late.  I see what you're saying about playable characters, but honestly, I don't see how that can have affected more than a couple of sales.  Hardcore fans would buy it regardless of whether there were just 3 character stories or not; casual fans probably only know who Sweet Tooth is anyway.

PSABR was actually advertised quite heavily I'm told (not in my country, but in mainland Europe I hear that adverts were on quite a lot) so about this one - yes, I agree, it was an ill-fated project from the start.  I'm going to quote KylieDog's post about the sales of fighting games last year for exposure, though, because although PSABR did indeed flop, pretty much every fighting game flopped last year without any exceptions.  

So yeah, tl;dr version: Starhawk's complete lack of advertising killed it more than anything else - PS3 owners previously bought multi-player only games quite happily but they didn't buy a game that they didn't know about.  Twisted Metal was a decent effort in a dying genre plagued again by no advertising, but also hit by server issues which killed word-of-mouth.  PSABR flopped like every other fighting game last year.

Notice how Warhawk and MAG are online only? It's what Starhawk should have been. The campaign is what killed it. If the campaign were say any good at all (there is no denying it sucks) then it would have a much better chance. The casual fans don't matter for Twisted Metal it's about the hardcore TM fans and all of them are well aware past games had a dozen or so characters. It was a huge step down. Easilly the games biggest problem.