The Business: There Is A Limit To Competition Within The Network

We see this coming from the RTS sphere, but it's applicable to Tabletop.

TLDR: You cannot afford to fuckup in a Network Effect-driven marketplace.

That's how this Starcraft 2 retroclone failed. They fucked up, and they fucked up repeatedly, in entirely preventable manners. Given that this was by SC2 veterans, they had even less slack for errors than what would otherwise be the case.

Prospects do not compare your vision to The Game That Matters. They compare what you acutally have against The Head Game In Charge, so no you don't have "time to grow" or "can pull off a redemption story". You have to hit the exhaust port on the Death Star or you die; you are swinging at the king- you cannot afford to miss!

Meanwhile, if your challenging product has anything of merit within its design that gets player attention then The Game That Matters can just Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish it into The Game That Matters and now your value proposition is gone. Game. Over.

This is why D&D is The Only Game That Matters in Tabletop, and always will be, such that not even retroclones will ever pose a threat to it- and those who think otherwise are delusional.