[badsectoracula]

Considering the money he made from Braid alone (let alone The Witness, which back then he claimed that it was about to surpass Braid's sales) - $4m mentioned at some point - i'd say the mistake would be his expenses.

$4m alone (again, let alone his other games) would be enough to retire and make languges, engines and whatever else he wanted.

[santoshalper]

For yourself, sure. To pay others to do it? Hardly. A two-pizza team in the US costs $1M to $2M a year fully loaded, depending on location.

[badsectoracula]

US is huge, i'm 100% certain that he could move to a cheaper location if that was a concern.

And with the Internet there isn't really a reason to limit yourself to people from US, a fraction of that would be enough to contract people from EU (though i'm certain you can also find people from US with much less than $500k/year-$1m/year to work on games).