Elden Ring was exactly "make good game, sell it" and it sold very well.
Elden Ring was spectacularly well received and has sold millions of units, but it's "only" a game. There's no casino in the back, and therefore no gambling-related revenue stream.
It may not work as well or as easily, but I don't think that's the point being made.
Business models that are lower-risk and higher-return are systematically preferred by investors. Games are expensive to make. FromSoft has been successful enough to stay in business for now. They’ll always be in competition with studios that sacrifice product quality for profitability. Many studios literally cannot afford to do things their way.
[1] https://www.polygon.com/23070948/elden-ring-sales-chart-npd-...
[2] https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/06/03/diablo-immortal-gen...
Whereas the former, despite being a good game, may not provide the revenue model desired by its stakeholders.
ER impressed me so much that I bought three earlier titles from From Software, an additional $120 spent. Regrettably, you show consumer behavior like that to a mercenary games industry exec, and they'll just see "lost opportunity to put the screws to the market" and not "we should make better games."
(This is the first time that I've literally worn out a controller playing a single game).
Until it doesn't. We're not talking about the same thing here because one is a one-time payment (license) vs on-going (loot boxes / SaaS). I'm highly critical of loot box (p2p) games, but you're on-going payments do pay for content in the future. Companies who charge once have very little incentive to maintain the software (assuming it requires it to).
Let's say ER reaches 20M + 8Mx2 for it's two upcoming DLCs @ $40 each. That's $1.8B lifetime. Pretty amazing! DI would need to make $360M per year to be an equivalent business. So 800k in the first 24 hours is not too far off track to being equivalent.