The main response I have to the above is: why can't we do both?
We're in a stable enough position at the moment that we can afford to plod along with both things. I'm also not in a very good state of mind for making a strategy game right now, and so the likely result of that would be pretty poor. Keith is working on that, however; first with SBR, then AI War. AI War 2 is still a long ways off programming-wise.
Meanwhile I'm able to focus on something else that I'm passionate about, and on a timetable that I have more control over. I was passionate about Starward Rogue, but had no control over its timeframe thanks to being staff-heavy and past mistakes with the amount of time spent on SBR and so on. We're now running a lot closer in terms of our expenses to our income, so the risks of doing anything are lower.
And in my case, I see a hole in the market here, and feel a burning desire for this kind of game, and so am thinking... why not? The last time I had this feeling and noticed that kind of hole, AI War happened. There literally hasn't been any other case where that's happened for me. I'm brimming over with game ideas all the time, but that sort of situation is pretty darn rare. For me it made sense to take a couple of weeks and see if it made sense and was something I could actually pull off. The discovery was: heck yes, absolutely I can do this.
I totally get the concerns you guys have, don't get me wrong. And you could wind up saying "I told you so" some months down the line. That said, at the moment we're pursuing something safe (the Keith side of things, which he is more than capable of handling himself), and something that is more of a departure, but in a good way I think (the me side of things -- and I'm not pulling in Keith one iota for my bits).
I'm not sure how many of you read about the whole Trine 3 debacle, but that's not this. Those guys really tried to go nuts with the graphical fidelity in 3D in a just absolutely insane way, and they were trying to live up to the standards of a prior game while also translating it into three dimensions, etc, etc. That led to just so very many problems for them that they discussed.