Triple-A studios are often their own publisher too with a profit margin of 50 to 70%, which is a lot in game business. 1/3 of total cost are spend on marketing only. Cyberpunk's development and marketing cost were about ~$321 million in total. Which is of course a lot and needs to be funded upfront first. But we shouldn't forget that CD Project was only the lead production studio and didn't develop the game completely in-house. Cross-production is totally normal for big studios and one of the reasons why Triple-A games are released nearly every year. An indie developer normally doesn't have this luxury.
Triple-A games are cash cows for game publisher and the reason why we get a new Call of Duty, FIFA etc. every year. Wouldn't they be highly profitable for the publisher, then we wouldn't see a new game every year. However, the studios behind those games barely survive, because the huge piece of profits goes to the publisher, their managers and shareholders.
Since big publisher and Triple-A studios have access to a pool of experienced workers and technology worldwide, they are able to (mass-)produce big-ass games for way less, which results in a price tag of $70 per copy (target price). An indie studio isn't able to compete with this price tag with an identical game, because it wouldn't even cover its production cost. It's the same like you would buy your eggs in your local supermarket for ~$2 and your local farmer sells them for $4.
In case of NLT and many other erogame developers they won't get rich from selling their game on Steam & Co. Those platforms are used for visibility only with the purpose to gather (new) supporters on Patreon to help to fund their next game (and equipment). Erogames are mostly sold below cost after a game is complete.
Well, as I said, you should really dig deeper into how the game industry works these days because the mass production rule doesn't apply to this industry~!
Like you said, all those Triple-A studios can access the most talented people and the latest technology worldwide, but that won't come cheap, in fact, it's really expensive, after all, these people are not production line workers or farmers~! creativity aside, their job requires lots and lots of time to iterate and cooperate, until it hits the absolutely right balance~! for example, the environment artist and the level designer often find themselves in the opposite position, because the environment artist were asked to make the scenes more immersive, yet the level designer wants to print a standout color or lights in the environment to show the player where they can lay their hands or where to go, but by doing so, it would totally ruin the immersive feelings, so in order to achieve that subtle balance, it requires months even years to iterate, and that's just one of the thousands problems, sometimes it could really drive you nuts, trust me, I know~! yet, in the meantime, the money never stops buring, not even for a sceond~!
But, That is the good old days because at this rate, no matter how good your games are, the revenue is just simply not enough to keep the company flowing ~! and that's when the so call publishers have changed, to themselves and to all those triple-A studios~! how? they change themselves into financial investments corporation, so they can hoard money in the stock market by making the studios into a tool that increase their market values, therefore they don't need to make the game good anymore, only presentable is enough to make people buy their stocks~! that is why we get all those repetitive boring unremarkable trash like COD Battlefield and all those sport games, all of the UBIsoft's games every year~! that's why they care about LGBT more than they care about the actual gamers, that is also why they dare to release the unfinished games, because when they see the game couldn't meet the deadline, they short selling the stock share, then release the game, so they get paid either way, and the studio takes the blame~! if you ever wondered why CDPR launched that fuckup version of Cyberpunk 2077 in the first place, and then still have lots of money to burn~! well, this is it, The same goes for the battlefield 2042 too~!
In the end, what did the studio get~!? nothing but blame, they lost their autonomy, their creativity, and their passion for games~! all they can do is wait for the corp to squeeze every last drop of their value, then get disbanded, because the publisher couldn't care less about how great they use to be~! they just simply move to acquire other studios in the market and do it all over again~! because even just to make the game to be presentable, with all those outsourcing, all those purchased ready-to-use assets, the endless overtime, the cost of making a triple-A game is still too high~! like I said, the mass production rule doesn't apply to this industry, no matter how hard the publisher like to try~! because it's way too complex, coordinating the entire project alone is gonna cost you lots of time, and time is money~! and if you continuously release bad and unfinished games, then you gonna find your market value tanked very quickly, eventually, you gonna lost it all~!
