It's not so simple. While it may not be causation ("they're successful because they don't make sales" is likely not true), the correlation can be almost as strong: the philosophy / mindset that leads you to make that choice of strategy is the same philosophy that also informed various other decisions that led to you developing a successful game.

I think a good example of this was the Blizzard of old. They "could afford" to only launch things that were near perfect because they were successful, but they also were successful because they never relented on their perfectionism.

So you shouldn't blindly imitate the choices of successful people, but taking a few pages out of their core values and driving pillars will likely help a lot.