Well put!
And yeah, “profitable” is a variable quality. Sadly, to get investment, the definition of profit tends to have to be short term ROI. But I agree, if you can sustain yourself over a longer period of time with more modest returns, you should be able to make the sorts of games we are talking about. It then becomes a case of opportunity costs–do you sink that time and effort into something that will return so little (in monetary terms)? Only someone who is making games for their own sake really–or who has sources of income that both are sufficient for their needs and don’t take up their time–can really do this.
But we can hope!