You're comparing them to a handful of the most successful games of all time. Yes id hasn't produced the best selling games of all time, but overall their games

You're comparing them to a handful of the most successful games of all time. Yes id hasn't produced the best selling games of all time, but overall their games have been successful. Even comparing Minecraft's 7 million copies to Quake's 1.7, you need to consider that Quake sold most of those copies at a much higher price point. Mojang (at this point) is also larger than id was up until Doom 3. I'd not arguing that id is still a dominant force in the industry (they aren't), but calling all of their games after Doom commercially unsuccessful is a little extreme. Your definition of a hit being 5-10 million copies per platform means the only hit game is Call of Duty. If an average AAA title sells 5-10 million total it is wildly successful, and 2-3 million is usually still profitable or at least breaking even.