Wasn't trying to nitpick your numbers, just was saying the number of copies AAA publishers need to sell is even more dramatic that you indicated. I'm not so great at numbers myself. 
Some publishers may consider less than a million copies sold to be a failure. Personally, I'd be happy with anything north of 10k sales at my currently state, trying to develop my first release. 
I figured you weren't nitpicking; no worries.
Isn't crazy though how so much goes into a single 6 hour game experience and yet the big fish are all scrambling and shutting down? We see news of old-house publishers struggle at least once a week and hear about dozens, if not hundreds of developers who love making games just like up getting kicked to the curb because they didn't make millions of dollars for a company. That's some sad stuff to me.
The same money that goes into a "AAA" title seems like they could fund dozens of indie games that have just as much; if not more, potential to gain a profit. Lower over-head and more creative freedom for the indies makes it a dream-like place to be in my opinion. Granted, financial failure lands on the shoulders of indies pretty squarely, but that's the risks we take.
And that's just one of the reasons that I think being a "David" in a world of "Goliath"s is so much better.
That's not to say the Goliath's don't have some merit in creating some cool games, but when there are now hundreds and thousands of David's running around, eating up profits, the Goliath's will starve because they need just so much more to live.
Now, when it comes to niche game development, I think indies get to do more unique gameplay mechanics than the big guys because an indie can afford to take a chance that a Goliath can't. Take Starcraft for example. Its not that unique of a game. Its well polished, but they can't add unique and crazy gameplay mechanics without potentially alienating their audiences and losing profit they need.
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It seems that most small games and game studios are most successful when they don't try to beat the goliaths at their own game, and when they connect more-personally with their audience. This sometimes means creating smaller, more-niche games for a markedly smaller audience (despite a few "small games" that had break-out success in the mainstream -- like Minecraft).
Big publishers and small studios work at opposite ends of the spectrum, really -- Sure, the big boys make these massive, impressive, expensive titles, but at the end of the day they're actually constrained by what they can do, because their games are so expensive to produce that they have to be all things to all people. They can't even just decide to do lots of smaller games, either, because those types of projects don't provide the return that investors and stockholders want to see. The benefit of being a smaller shop is that it becomes perfectly legitimate to decide that you're going to serve one little corner of the market, and to have low enough overhead that doing so doesn't necessarily mean a life of eating Top Ramen.
throw table_exception("(? ???)? ? ???");
Wasn't trying to nitpick your numbers, just was saying the number of copies AAA publishers need to sell is even more dramatic that you indicated. I'm not so great at numbers myself.
Some publishers may consider less than a million copies sold to be a failure. Personally, I'd be happy with anything north of 10k sales at my currently state, trying to develop my first release.
Remember Homefront? It sold 1 or 2 million copies. Was deemed a failure by it's publisher.
"I AM ZE EMPRAH OPENGL 3.3 THE CORE, I DEMAND FROM THEE ZE SHADERZ AND MATRIXEZ"
My journals: dustArtemis ECS framework and Making a Terrain Generator
You do not need to buy an Golaith engine. Plenty of very good and free engines out there that can save you like three or four years of work.
Ogre and Torque3D are just a few of the fine engines out there. I am told that the free version of Unity should do just fine too. Hey LEGO Star wars is made with Unity
In fact do not even think about competing witht the big players in this industry. I mean they have an army of workers ready to produce and ship their stuff and even an army of hype warriors(marketing) to make people believe that they cannot exist without the newest Mass Effect etc. etc.
Be happy, make games
"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education"
Albert Einstein
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education"
Albert Einstein
The recipe is quite easy.
Make a game you want to play and which doesn't exist, not a game you want to make money with.
This ancient wisdom displays the pitfall, because if you want to make money with it, you will target a larger audience, trying to streamline it etc. and suddenly you are on the same lane as the goliath, which will overroll you soon enough.
If you make a game you want to play which doesn't exists (any more), you will automatically start to make a (fun) game in a niche and there are enough people ,who will find this niche interesting enough to make some money out of it.
So, change your mindset, I think that Notch never made minecraft to get rich...
In case of StarCraft 2 marketing, where you could see only CGI trailers and no actual gameplay, that shows something unique. There isn't much originallity in the game but it is fun to play anyway.
As long as your game appears fun people will buy it and play it.
The unique feature of Starcraft 2 is that it is a sequel to Starcraft: if you offer an update of the best RTS ever, bigger and better and with fancy graphics, you don't need originality. In fact you don't want originality: innovations would be perceived as ignorant attempts to fix what isn't broken and presumed to change the game for the worse.
Unfortunately you aren't Blizzard, you don't have a reputation of being able to make extremely good "traditional" games, and if you try even matching Starcraft is an unrealistic objective; novel ideas are the only thing you can put on the balance against your game's imperfections.
Omae Wa Mou Shindeiru
Well, in the case of Blizzard. They pretty much made what we consider a "traditional" RTS, a "traditional" MMORPG. So while we see it as "They're making traditional games" they are just doing their stuff, that just happens to be the source of what we consider "traditional" in some genres.
"I AM ZE EMPRAH OPENGL 3.3 THE CORE, I DEMAND FROM THEE ZE SHADERZ AND MATRIXEZ"
My journals: dustArtemis ECS framework and Making a Terrain Generator
I'm beginning to see less and less of a David and Goliath issue. It is getting to the point in the AAA arena that there is only room for one of each genre.
If you release an FPS the same year as a Halo game you fail.
If you release a sports sim the same year as a Maddon or a Fifa you fail.
If you release an RPG the same year as Bethesda you fail.
If you release an MMO you fail (there is already WOW)
The only exception to this seems to be driving games.
So in actual fact it is really just the Goliath vs Goliaths who are having the problems.
Whilst indies are getting on with it and just releasing games that don't need to sell millions to be a success. I know indies who are making more than the 30k that DaveTroyer estimated just from doing simple match 3 games. Indies have a much leaner operation and don't need to be guessing where their money is comming from this time next year. A lot of indies don't even have full time staff so it is quite easy for people to work on day / weekend jobs to earn a living when sales are slow.
