[WhaleBiologist]

>it's objectively a worse use of those engineers' time

If you are ActivisionBlizzard, or EA. What do you do if you're not them? THQ is a good example of a publisher that tried to mimic the big dogs, and failed dismally because of it. There's a huge difference between AAA games company, and wannabe-AAA games company, and the expansive graveyard of developers/publishers is a testament to that.

It seems incredulous to me that when facing a distant bankruptcy, the best choice is to keep doing what you've been doing, dump all your remaining cash into finishing the AAA games you've got going, and betting it all on black. Are these companies completely oblivious to the fact that smaller, indie-style games are, at the very least, profitable?

Maybe the games industry culture really is this self-destructive. Or maybe, with budgets so high, even for a huge company, solvent to insolvent can be 1 or 2 poor releases away.

[dagw]

Once past a certain size and far enough in the hole, being marginally profitable isn't going to help. It's go big or go home that counts. Investors aren't interested in a +-3% annual return, they want 1000% or nothing.