The market is so saturated that lots of good games have a hard time even getting noticed. Just making a good game doesn't automatically mean success.

There are definitely a lot of consumers who will gladly pay $20 for Silksong because of the hype and pedigree surrounding it, but would never take a chance spending that much on a game that hasn't had that kind of hype train surrounding it. Which does make sense, without the hype train you don't know if a more obscure indie may or may not be worth the $20. But then that tells us that it's the hype train that matters here, not just whether or not the game is good.