I don't see "doubling down" as analogous to "responding acidly," and I'd actually say that Apple's most common response to criticism isn't "doubling down" as mu

I don't see "doubling down" as analogous to "responding acidly," and I'd actually say that Apple's most common response to criticism isn't "doubling down" as much as "not officially responding at all." You may find their lack of apology for arguably dubious design decisions or out-and-out product flaws to be annoying, and I get it, but it's not as if the tech industry is chock-full of counterexamples. In any case, the OP's argument for "why all of our games look like crap" is "we're not prioritizing the resources to put into consistent, polished aesthetics." I'm going to bet that if you made a consensus list of the most common complaints with Apple over the last ~5 years, "they just don't pay enough attention to how things look" would not be near the top.