There's also a lot of assumptions being made that no one has any basis for. "Sell out" by definition requires a certain intent which no one here has any direct knowledge of. Doing something for money in and of itself isn't selling out. It's the compromise of personal moral and creative views that is selling out. We cannot know that is what is happening here.
The best you can do is take Ash at his word which is and always has been "I make what I like". The Real Steal license is a good example of that in action. ThreeA are not making Adam, the main bot from the film, because they don't want to. That to me is the opposite of selling out. There's no way to know for sure, but what little evidence there is points in the complete opposite direction of the concept of "selling out".
"Better" is also a totally personal thing imo. It's just like "good and evil". It's not strictly something that can be "true". It is usually just an expression of personal taste. Sometimes it occurs that a majority will agree on if something is "good" or "bad" but that doesn't make it any more "true" to me. Just because 60% of the population at a given point in time thinks, let's say a movie, is "bad" that doesn't mean that plenty of people don't think it's "good" or that in the future that opinion might change.
A lot of people love that Square. Just because you do not does not make it "bad". It just means you do not like it.