[Arclight]

Imho it's not so much about being developed by a big company, it's really about popularity;

Casual gamers outnumber core gamers by a fair margin, so for a game to be popular (ie. liked by the majority of gamers) it needs to appeal to casual gamers.

When devs listen to their fans, the majority is most likely to get what they want (of course there are exceptions: some teams want to stick to their vision instead of expanding the user base, but it's rare since money is always a concern), meaning a popular game is dumbed down or simplified because the majority wants instant gratification with minimal effort.

Both ETW and SH are scalable, making them fairly popular. Casual gamers are interested in ETW as a strategy game (imho it's a tactical game, because the battles are the focus), simply auto-resolving battles. Imho the strategy element is very simplified, but that's exactly what they are looking for. Same with SH: with auto-aim on and realism options off, it's a very simple lock-and-shoot experience, though you need to find a target first (the one "hard" thing in the game, which I think accounts for a part of the popularity gap between SH and TW games).

It's both a blessing and a curse: the simplification comes at a cost for core gamers, but without it the games would not be popular enough to keep producing new ones.

*(forgive me for the broad terms like casual- and coregamer, it's not ment to offend.)