HP must have a sweetheart deal for manufacturing space. When manufacturing starts, stops, barely starts etc, months and years drag on until the recurring costs suck every drop of air from the room, as the company becomes insolvent. On Pinside alone, we've seen many companies fail from up close. They mostly have the same qualities (high rent, too much space, ongoing salaries, expensive machinery, taxes and overhead). These destroy cash flow like a flesh eating bacteria if allowed to run on, and HP is not immune. Cash provided by HP owners covers some of these costs, yet it doesn't cover all. There's also money required for (inventory, work in process, shipping container deposits, insurance, unpaid bills, refund requests, high demand for replacement parts, increased shipping and currency fluctuations). There can't be enough to cover that because we haven't seen evidence of hundreds of games that would have shipped out, nor are they on the factory floor, nor are they steaming across the Atlantic.
If HP is having trouble raising cash to order parts they cannot dream of buying in bulk, that alone may add 50% to prices HP is being charged. Recent emails requesting LE guys pay up seems to be suspicious timing. Whatever the reason, if HP can't ship 25 Aliens a week at this point in time (and they haven't shown they can consistently make 5 a week) they are way under capitalized. So much so, it seems a certainty they'll close the doors before getting all promised games out. The writing is on the wall and I don't expect HP will be solvent on July 2019. Can someone make a death clock for me? The silver lining is that during the decline, HP will continue to build and ship games. More people will be getting them and that better include a lot of LE buyers who paid the first time.