That's kind of my point. In my view, Mighty Fin is pitched at the right level of investment and will have made back far more of that as a percentage than Whale Trail. The Whale Trail team over invested, probably spending too much on marketing/advertising which has a low ROI, and may never break even.
There are definitely ways in which you can protect your downside to increase your chance of breaking even and moving into profitability. Luck plays a role, but you can stack the odds for success considerably with smart decisions, careful spending, and the right activity.
All but 2 of the 15 titles PikPok have published so far have failed to or won't break even.
The main problem developers face on the App Store (and indeed for most platforms) is the naive belief that developing a great game is the only thing that matters. The world is littered with the corpses of developers who made great games.
My opinion is that Whale Trail is not even a good game let alone a great game. It's boring and the art/music is so sugary sweet it turns people (even girls) off. The theme also makes no sense to the mass market (flying whale in clouds? how does the casual gamer identify with that?) and the game over all has little reason to replay after a minute or two. Also traditional marketing/advertising has no place in the iOS space. It doesn't help returns at all.
The reason the game sold poorly is because it simply wasn't good, nor did it fit in the market properly. It was polished though, I agree with that completely. But polishing something doesn't make it a great game, it just makes it a well put together game.
I wouldn't be all over this guy if he didn't say:
"If we shift less than this, then we can safely say premium is no longer sustainable for ustwo and others like us in terms of investment,"
That's such a stupid blanket statement. Your "genius" game fails, therefor it's not you that's the problem, it's the market and thus all other titles will be failures as well? Hubris much?