The problem for PDX has always been that their core games that made them are excellent, unique, and ubiquitous within their market. Which sounds great, but their market is a particularly niche, niche with a lower cap on potential revenue than PDX want. The (vast) majority of people that will buy their core games, already buy their core games so the topic of how to grow beyond that soft ceiling has been a challenge for them.
Slitherine can keep making Slitherine games without as much of this worry because they keep their budget increases steady and modest, whereas each PDX game has had pretty big jumps in budget and presentation, and everything they've indicated seems to point to them wanting that to continue - hence the needing of more revenue.
They can, and to an extent do, keep making their 'map games' with different takes on mechanics, time periods, governance focuses etc but at most these will each only potentially bring in a small slice of players to their current audience that weren't already sold on their other franchises - which is unlikely, most 'map gamers' own all the big 'map games' even if they may not be as into those specific games focuses as others. Their biggest success at trying to break out of the 'map game' mold is Stellaris, which did bring in a unique audience of 4X fans that weren't as in on stuff like grand strategy games, while also still appealing to the majority of their more historical 'map gamers' who also just like games that make them think strategically. But it's been pretty much a one off on that front so far.
This is why they went hard into relatively expensive regular DLC that were half fairly light on meaningful content, and half evolutionary developments of the game. And that works somewhat but people have been kind of tired of feeling milked by the games for several years now. Which brings us to them trying to branch out further into projects that still can appeal to their current audience, but have a much higher chance at bringing in sizable new audiences as well - they had the first taste of this with Mount and Blade and Magika which led to further resources put into publishing, but it never felt core to their future as a studio until post Cities Skylines and Pillars of Eternity which were both relatively big and broad successes.
Thats when you start seeing a lot of these longer-term plans start that we're now seeing kind of stumble at the finish line. Honestly Bloodlines 2 has been kind of a curse for them, I can't imagine how much money and energy has been spent on that project that would have been worthwhile shoring up other places. Which sucks as it has been my most anticipated game since it was announced. From a business decision at least, putting more energy and money into trying to make a Sim's rival probably would have been the smarter move, whether that would have been enough to save Life by You or not who knows. Poor publishing (and dev) management and Paradox are an iconic duo so even with infinite money I'm not convinced a lot of these projects would have panned out better. HBS in particular was fumbled hard, which sucks for such a talented studio. The Shadowrun CRPG games are some of the best examples of the kind of quality and scope you can achieve on very modest budgets.
At least Triumph knocked AoW4 out of the park, I had fairly low expectations and was pleasantly surprised - that alone may save their publishing efforts from going super conservative. Though I image a degree of that will happen anyway with less risk-taking, much firmer control and oversight, and smaller capital investments instead of acquisitions.
Foundry has been well received in early access as well, but for whatever reason it hasn't taken off the same way as Factorio/Satisfactory etc has, it's been relatively modest.
The word of mouth around Prison Architect 2 is pretty err... I'll be kind and say skeptical. It can still come out and swing for the fence but there is almost a negative excitement around it, and considering how CS2 released well I can't exactly blame people. Also a lot of people just really preferred the 2D look which doesn't help.
This isn't even mentioning their squandering of good opportunities. How do you, a company known for strategy games with the most popular space 4X on the market, screw up the Star Trek license? Like, talk about fumbling the bag, fuck me.
The future is interesting for sure, let's just hope they make sure their in-house and published releases are as polished and spit shined before launch as possible because I don't know how many CS2's they can afford, particularly when even their more modest projects like Empire of Sin suffer from a lot of the same flaws. It's not a great look (unless you're named after a small city in Maryland). And I don't even have the energy to go into how much of a mess WOD as a whole has been for them, or how the effects of internal coups can impact all of this.
