Oh.
1: Commercial or economical success does not equate to quality. In 2007, the per capita spending of health care in the United States was US$6.7 Billion dollars. That adds to the per capita of the of the US, which is a representation of growth, and is supposed to imply how prosperous that nation is. That said, high medical expenses indicate sick and dying people, and lower medical expenses would indicate a nation with a higher quality of life.
This is one of many examples on how money and economical success is detached from true, tangible quality in real life. Don't mistake the two and try to run with it.
I think you've forgotten what industry you're dealing with, and more importantly, what kind of game Smash actually is. I can't believe you just compared the video games and electronics industry to taxes and health care benefits (of which your post shows you know nothing about, really).
But more importantly, Brawl not only did what it set out to do, but went above and beyond that. It's a fighting-like party game with literally thousands of hours of single- and multi-player content, beautiful graphics, amazing music, and yes, good gameplay mechanics. Maybe the mechanics weren't what you wanted, but I'm not really sure how often I have to say it: you don't matter. Vocal. Minority.
2: I don't like Brawl because there are blatant problems with it, problems that shouldn't exist, and are simply bad game design; not because I dislike Brawl for what it tries to be, but because for what it fails to be. Frame disadvantages causing infintes, poor loading times upon Pokemon and Zelda/Sheik transformations, stored lag from up B recovery moves on characters, poor choices in frame data in general on moves (i.e. ZSS not being able to connect her third jab legitimately just by the opponent holding L/R), advantages for port priority, non-optional tripping, exploits like the Infinite Dimensional Cape. The list goes on. I guarantee you that if I hadn't dumped this game two years ago, I'd remember a lot more bull**** to flig at you, and then some. Get someone in here like Magus or Dantarion who has actually broken the game down and they'll give you a whirl too.
The fact of the matter is, none of this matters. It doesn't matter of Marth infinites the whole cast by spamming uthrow, and it doesn't matter if King Dedede infinites the whole cast with standing grab. It doesn't matter, and it doesn't matter because my little sister enjoys Smash because she gets to play as Princess Peach and throw bombs and turnips at me. She also really loves Pikachu's Final Smash. The game is especially fun to her, and by the way, mostly everyone else, with 4 or more players on the screen and all the items on, which removes 90% of the balance issues you just talked about, and which most of them will never notice anyway.
Once upon a time, Blizzard introduced a feature into World of Warcraft called the arena. While most of the game's player vs. player combat took place in battlegrounds or in open areas with 10 or more players per side, arenas scaled things down a bit and removed outside factors like potions, and put players in a smaller, more limited area. The result was that the game's balance (which was pretty good, actually, considering how the game was supposed to be played until that point) put under small microscopes with certain team compositions (of 2 and 3 players) dominating and throwing the game's beautiful design and balance into constant question and change.
The reason for this was the same reason Smash is not good when played how you want it to be played: because it's not designed for that. Arena still exists in WoW, and people who enjoy it still can, but the rewards have been dramatically reduced and focus on it has been reduced as well. You can still play and enjoy it, but those who do respect it for what it is and know that certain dumb stuff will happen because of the intent of the design.
3: Brawl is successful in tournaments and otherwise because it road the waves an amazing series, and its predecessor was one of the best Nintendo titles ever created.
This I'll give you, actually. With that said, Brawl still isn't really designed for competitive 1v1 play. Teams is very good in Brawl, incidentally.
