> There was a great article on here a while back about VHS and Betamax. While Betamax was better by nearly every metric, it lost.

There is some nuance here.

Manufacturers didn't know if people preferred shorter, higher quality (Beta) or longer, less quality (VHS). That's partly why there were two formats.

Most people like to say VHS "won" but what it really won was the consumer market. Beta won the professional TV news market because it turns out news stations had a high demand for short, high quality video storage.

I point this out only to say that winning isn't a one dimensional/binary outcome. You can "lose" in one market but still be very profitable in another market.