Missed opportunity for laid off game developers?

All too frequently we see these once adored developer studios close a couple years down the line. A good example is Pandemic. I don't know the details on what went wrong but I do know they must have had some talented people there with their pretty good track record. Probably a lot of these people were picked up by other developers which is fine. Everyone needs money. My question is why don't more of these talented people go independent and set their own rules. Smaller pie but you get a bigger piece of that pie. Plus if a group from a once big studio starts up their own thing, they will more than likely be able to get a little press. I believe we are now in a time where you don't need to create your own game engine or even spend $1m on one such as Unreal. There are some real powerful low cost engines such as Torque and Unity. I'm sure there are more. With your talent and hard work, I don't see a reason you guys couldn't start out on your own and publish on Steam or XBox Live Arcade, etc. Remember the big guys think the PC isn't worth it. Take advantage of them all racing to attack the consoles and scoop up the PC market. Have dedicated servers, modding, etc. that PC gamers love and cater to them. They may be a smaller group, but nobody games like PC gamers.