That's true but there is a middle ground, and it's not like indie developers can't get it together and ship great code without being massive. A good recent exam

That's true but there is a middle ground, and it's not like indie developers can't get it together and ship great code without being massive. A good recent example that gets thrown around here is the new Tomb Raider, where first month sales of ~3.5 million were underwhelming because the game cost so much to make (and/or was meant to subsidize Square-Enix's other recent failures). Compare that to something like Braid or Journey, which obviously aren't games of the same scope as Tomb Raider but they're quality, highly rated games made by a fraction of the people.