It's definitely not! Many good things cost more to build than people are willing to pay for them.

Yeah, lots of good things aren't profitable (at least to the ones making them). Xerox PARC comes to mind, Xerox didn't want to capitalize on those good things that were made there and thus Gates and Jobs did instead.

Xerox wanted to capitalize, but their business model, target customer and price point was not as innovative as the technology they had to offer.

But building user-hostile crap _anything_ is way more profitable

Well, no, not really - the example of Simcity 2013 vs Cities: Skylines given above is a great example where the user-hostile crap was much less profitable than what EA could have gotten based on their brand if they would have just made a straightforward remake similar to Cities: Skylines.

There's brand destroying short term strategies, and strategies that optimize for longevity.

The Dreamcast was considered by many gamers the best console of its time, great hardware, affordable price, great games, developer friendly. And yet, it was a commercial failure and it ended the Sega consoles.

Generally, for big profit, you need to build something good, but the reverse is not true. And you can still make small profit with crap.