> I can't imagine anyone qualified to run billion dollar projects has much time for any interests other than running billion dollar projects.

Seems to me that understanding their product (core product) and the market is one of the major parts of their job. Even if that means getting informed by your r&d and sales department to steer the development department.

counter example: Concord

We are seeing that there are a lot of players that did stop rewarding the companies as described. The problem is that the signals are not being picked up in these studio's. Partially due to the big divide between critical acclaim vs player reception that we have been seeing in games in the past decade.