RedHerring said:
do you really think that people not involved with games take notice of the publisher though?
I'll answer this, both in general and based on personal experience (long ago). No, people generally don't pay attention to a game's publisher.
BUT, if they get burnt enough times (or burnt particularly badly), then they might.
Personal anecdote: long, long ago, I bought an NES and a couple of games. At the time, I had no idea there were separate publishers. Like many people, then and now, I thought Atari 2600 games were all from Atari, and all NES games for my new purchase were from Nintendo.
The two games I purchased--for nearly the same price--were The Legend of Zelda and Commando. One of them provided me with weeks of awesome entertainment. The other one was good for a day or so of frustrating, uninspired gameplay with awful performance to boot. And of course, the 3rd game I had was the pack-in, Super Mario Bros, which was also great (but I'd long since mastered the arcade version).
Perplexed at this huge disparity, I looked closely at the game manuals and discovered that the good one was from the console maker, Nintendo, and the other was from another company! I vowed never to buy another game from this awful "Capcom" again (long since broken, of course; Capcom are one of the greats).
How many millions of times can you imagine a very similar scenario playing out in today's homes with the Wii?