The people in charge can count to a degree, as they're the ones making executive decisions (and they have the power to make or break something), but of course the talent comes from the teams of people involved and of course if said teams of people are good at what they do, then they are capable of picking up the pieces when they lose their job for one reason or another. For example, Square Enix made some pretty poor decisions and they lost some really good staff, but said staff (including Nobuo Uematsu) have joined another studio and have released some pretty damn good games, like Lost Odyssey, which is a far superior game to FFXIII IMO, perhaps not with the same financial success though and they released a Wii title not so long ago as well, but I think it serves as an example of how significant people's talent can be and how they can survive without the companies they were previously members of.
The guys at the top can of course make all the bad decisions, for example, SW:TOR was meant to be a really successful game and it had the potential for it because it was actually very good, but it wasn't handled very well at all. BW & EA made all the bad decisions and no it's gone to F2P...and they even screwed that up.
Or EA & Spore, the plans for Spore would have made it a lot more epic than it actually turned out, I remember seeing demos of something less dumbed down, but somebody obviously made a decision somewhere along the line.
Though the downside I do see to having a games company go out of business, whilst the talented folk who made great games will likely end up elsewhere, I think the sad thing is that they've split apart and they're having to work with new minds. It can also mean the end of a game series you might really like if somebody else doesn't take on the sequels (and those who do, don't ruin them).
