"To me, hwoever, the only 'financial success' moniker that matters is whether or not the companies making it felt that monetarily wise; the game was worth making. Seems to me that both BIO, and MS seemed satisifed with the game's finanical success."
so, if i were to say spend thousands of hours making a game in my nonexistent garage (and lets say that it cost something to create, considering all the hours and electricity spent) expecting nothing more than to have a few friends to enjoy it, i would be able to call it a financial success
does this not in fact make the term financial success devoid of any meaning related to actual finances, by these standards you can decide that a game is a financial success before it even sells a single copy