They had 3 or more chances, and they made 3 way below average games. Don't surprise me.

Quintonmcleod appears to be a very bold poster....

Developing big games is an increadibly complex task involving dozzens or even hundreds of people across several years. It can be months before you even see a very basic prototype on a screen, and different parts of a game come together at different times. A game usually won't be fully playable from start to end until the last ~6 months of development and even then it will be filled with placeholder content and bugs. Even the best games are usually a complete mess until they go into final stretch. And until you get to the end everyone is hopeing it will all come together and become great in the end, that doesn't alyways happen for a veriaty of reasons. It can be a lack of money and resources, technical limitations, a rushed development, a lack of leadership or just a lack of talent in the team. But whatever the reason you won't know for sure until it's almost done and then it's usually too late to make it right. unless you are someone like Valve or Blizzard etc that can afford to keep delaying or even throw everything out and start over until they get it right.

I guess the company wasn't 'airtight' enough.

Quantum Conundrum wasn't that bad.  Wasn't that good either though, so yeah.