That's exactly why I'm hoping for a return of the vital AA industry we had just a decade or two ago. Some well-designed indie games are doing so well financially, that I hope the big publishers will see projects with lower costs as viable again.
That said, I wonder how much of an issue advertising is in this day and age. With the amount of games available to the average consumer now, publishers feel that they need to spend huge percentages of the money they put into a project into the advertising alone. And I honestly don't know whether they are wrong in thinking that. But I don't know. The optimist in me still kinda wants to believe that if your art is good enough, the audience will come to you.