BassForever
Member
I'm not sure why it is important that people realize that, when it is more important for traditional publishers to realize that there is more than one business model. Of course if you limit yourself to shipping a $60 game to retail, a lot of concepts don't seem profitable. But that's also not the only way to do business. Many big publishers already realize this, which is why they diversify their portfolio between big retail titles, and a range of other sort of offerings at different pricing and distribution formats.
The problem at least that I've seen is that some publishers only want to hit the opposite extremes, either its a $60 retail game loaded with dlc out the wazoo, or its a f2p mobile game (that has recently tied into the retail game) designed to get you to spend money to get past stamina mechanics or to risk on low % gatcha pulls.
I wish more developers would explore the middle space, doing $40 dollar retail games, doing $10-$40 dollar digital games. So many of these games/genres that are "not popular enough to be profitable" have clear examples of games in the indie/smaller budget sphere that have done well.