The truth is, unlike NCSoft, We can make reasonable assumptions that most of these SOE games are probably not above water, definitely not the kid's games, which is why Disney is also trying to get out of that market, streamlining down to one game. I may not like it when a game is killed, but I don't expect one that's hemorrhaging to be allowed to continue to do so.
NCSoft, on the other hand has never admitted the status of Heroes. Other news sources have reported that the game itself was making money, even if Paragon as a studio was not. They just didn't like the game and wanted it gone. it was never a business decision.
As to why not outsource a game? Unlike when CoH was put out, games these days belong to half a dozen or more different entities... Different publishers and sub-contractors developing different aspects of the game, whether it's cut scenes, audio, character design, text, etc... The paperwork nightmare needed to unlock all those agreements makes open-sourcing a project not just unpalatable, but financially unsound. It's one reason that my beloved Star Trek Armada II was never open-sourced despite the still thriving community that grew up around it, someone somewhere in the chain decided that they didn't want their portion to be in the public domain, and so the whole thing stayed locked up. (officially anyway, unofficially there are dozens of fan projects out there free for the asking)
