This probably happens for a number of reasons. The two most likely reasons are the fundamental concept the game is based on is bad, or the title just lacks the necessary polish to implement it's ideas properly. The first one is rare in big budget titles which can afford to have the game tested, and then can scrap the project without losing to much money. Smaller companies may have to follow through with their projects to recuperate their losses. The second issue can affect all companies, it occurs when delaying a title to polish the game further becomes to costly. Alone in the Dark is a great example of this, the game had a lot of interesting ideas, which would have worked great if they could have taken the time to polish them to perfection, but to delay the game would one decrease the hype surrounding the game, and two push the amount the game would cost to make, higher than the expected sales figures, or just decrease the expected profit of the game. Video games are an industry, and most of the time any occurrences can be explained for financial reasons. There are some exceptions to this but they are relatively rare.
View
