To me, its a good lesson not to put your eggs all in one basket.

Though having skills and realistic goals helps you avoid the first project failure, it does NOT guarantee success. If your overall strategy is about just the one game, profits you'll make from it to pay your staff, then your plan is doomed as ANYTHING could ruin your project (most of which is even out of your control). So it's best to assume that your first few projects will fail.

It has been said that very successful indies had to ship on average 4-5 projects before starting to get afloat. It IS a harsh market to start in, and it helps to know your way around, but by no means does it guarantee success, and a careful strategist would need to assume failure, and even consider an exit strategy.

It is probably good to go into making your first game making project with the mindset 'I don't mind if it fails.' as it takes the anxiety out of equation, and makes you aware of this possibility, and you can develop a fallback option for it.

Otherwise, saying 'your first game will surely fail' is on the same level with saying 'your third game will surely succeed', i.e. both sentences leave no room for statistical considerations.

Otherwise I agree with first two commenters after Tom Sloper's comment.

Ok, now I'm very insecure about all this.

I talked with my team and they agreed to release the game only with the minimum content enough for the game to be fun, and then we release updates (or free/cheap DLCs) that adds all the other features we planned.

Another, and maybe better, solution is to release an early access demo. That way we can have an idea of how would the reception be, and if positive, we release it with all the features.

Ok, now I'm very insecure about all this.

I talked with my team and they agreed to release the game only with the minimum content enough for the game to be fun, and then we release updates (or free/cheap DLCs) that adds all the other features we planned.

Another, and maybe better, solution is to release an early access demo. That way we can have an idea of how would the reception be, and if positive, we release it with all the features.

I combine early access and episodic, and the amount of feedback I got was nothing short of great.

But the early access demo should stand up well on its own and only advertise its current features, not the promise to add new features. Early Access had too many games which were Greenlit based on promises alone and then the developer vanished, leaving them with a half-finished product.

Ok, now I'm very insecure about all this.

I talked with my team and they agreed to release the game only with the minimum content enough for the game to be fun, and then we release updates (or free/cheap DLCs) that adds all the other features we planned.

Another, and maybe better, solution is to release an early access demo. That way we can have an idea of how would the reception be, and if positive, we release it with all the features.

Releasing an "early access demo" *is* a release.

Most successful new projects do not have a single launch. They have a small launch and attempt to get a few people, and if they don't make it big they fix what didn't work and launch again. Then find more things that didn't work, change them, and launch again. And again, and again, and again. Until they've removed all the big dealbreakers and people start buying.

For games that cannot have multiple launches (such as physical discs and cartridges), they start with experienced teams who know how to leverage what they've already got. The experienced teams will launch for internal groups until the biggest issues are resolved, then launch for focus groups over and over until the focus groups are happy, bring in external playtesters, get external reviews, and do as many mini-launches and tests as they possibly can, and also rely on their existing infrastructure to remove barriers and get people to start buying.