“What makes money” is always relative to how much it costs to make though.

Season passes, microtransactions, and DLCs. Additionally creating brand recognition among the masses along with flashy trailers. These are all reasons that AAA behemoths are still banked on to make huge net profits.

Sometimes these massive games fail and lose money in spectacular ways, but it happens a lot less than us enlightened good taste gamers would like to imagine. Money gets shoveled into creatively safe massive games because they usually make a huge profit. I love say, Wasteland 2, but that game probably has made less money in its entire life than the newest Fifa game made in a week.