There are absolutely decisions made in the creation of video games that are done with the goal of making the game better even at a high cost. It may have worked out in some of these cases to spend that money in the case of the returns, but they were risks taken with the goal of making the best possible game.

The best recent example I can think of was Larian adding full voice acting to Divinity Original Sin 2 (and I mean full, every NPC and every line of dialogue) at the end of the development cycle after having said multiple times that it wasn't a feasible option. It may be just putting a friendly spin on a pure financial decision, but when it was announced on Kickstarter they put it this way:

We wanted to hear our beloved characters talk. Really talk. So we crunched some numbers, poured some coffee and decided: Oh heck, why not. Let's fully voice Divinity: Original Sin 2!

They then go on to talk about how it took a crazy amount of work to cram what would have been a year plus of VO work for many games into a few months, and the end result was better and more complete VO than many much bigger name games. The end result probably gave the game more sales than it cost them to do the work, but it was not done in the name of "maximizing profits", it was done with the goal of making the best possible game.

They then went on to make the Definitive Edition and give it for free to existing owners, in a game with minimal DLC and no loot box model income.