Strategy Informer has comments from Obsidian Entertainment Creative Director Chris Avellone, who states the recent success of fundraisers for old-school-style RPGs like Wasteland 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera, and Obsidian's Project Eternity have opened they eyes of publishers to the commercial potential of this genre they long ago decided do not hold the desired potential for profits. He seems surprised that this would attract this kind of attention, but it seems no more surprising that the big guys would find these upstart kickstarts of interest after we saw a couple of major publishers issue "indie bundles" once those became a thing. Here's word:

We have actually had companies reach out to us and go 'you know what, for that price point, which is a much smaller risk than a lot of our AAA titles where there's a lot more at stake, that's much less risk for us and we wouldn't mind exploring the idea of doing old-school RPGs that are set up like this'. That totally floors me, I did not realise there would be that sort of sea change from publishers, but apparently there are a number of publishers that realise that doing an Eternity-style game is a good fit for them, and I am thankful for that.