'Quality', or rather the degree of gained or lost 'quality', is irrelevant to Activision, and SCE. MW3 is selling in the same wheelhouse of the first two. That's all that matters to Activision.
I don't think that's true, I think Activision would have preferred to hold on to that talent if they could (they only canned two guys, the rest bailed, many were forced to stay to get their completion bonus from MW2). And Sony specifically started Team ICO for the sake of 'Art', even now they've blown so much cash they continue to support that stuff. It's true they're in a business, and they need to make money, but it's not the single driving force of every decision made.
Maybe SCE will go under, maybe their management direction is terrible, but while it is what it is, I'm glad, I think it's right to allow someone like ND to work on the consoles if that's their preference.
I don't want the art debate (and personally, I don't consider games to be art), but that freedom to be creative, and to put weight on your studio's talent, put people out as the figure heads of games is a positive thing, even if it's ultimately bad for your company.
EDIT: Ironically, MW3 feels a lot like UC3, it feels like a knock off to me. It made sense in MW3, it doesn't make sense in UC3, so maybe the talent was meaningless really.