AAA game development without having an established IP/franchise is a real crapshoot, the first game must be great to draw enough players to a new thing, or you have poured $500M down the drain with nothing to show for it. Hell, even if it's great, it can still fail in the market. And the game has to be original, because if it's just derivative, people will just keep playing the established franchises (see Sony's Concord). But it can't be too odd, because the mainstream is all about established genres.
I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to make a dozen games costing $10-20M and build on the successful ones. Base some of them on Netflix series and movies for a little extra marketing.
Pretty sure netflix does exactly that with their other studios. I guess the big names mentioned in the article (Joseph Staten, Rafael Grassetti) wouldn't go to netflix for a 10 mio. games project, if what they already achieved is 20 times bigger. Heck, the compensation of these two probably consumes a 20 mio. budget.
I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to make a dozen games costing $10-20M and build on the successful ones. Base some of them on Netflix series and movies for a little extra marketing.