The Legend of The Oregon Trail

"SoftKey basically gutted the research and development side and put all its money into marketing"

and then

"Shorn of its talented staff, however, the Learning Company began haemorrhaging money. In 2000, Mattel posted a net loss of $430 million."

Does this pattern occur because the large companies doing the acquiring don't understand what making content for computers entails (creativity, a few good results from quite a large number of attempts &c). Or because of the logic of public quotation (share price)?