Term AAA is ambiguous. Please define it. If you mean publisher funded (a common meaning), then see above. If you mean big budget, then your remark about independent developers is invalid as well (there are independent studios with big budget games). Anyway, I don't see how any of that is related to professionalism. Funding method or budget size has nothing to do with it.

> Of course there are production and development costs, like in any other business

Yes, overcoming lock-in and duplication of effort add extra costs. That's exactly what I was saying above. It equally affects big and small budget projects, as well as publisher funded and independent studios. Saying they don't care about extra costs is simply ignoring the reality.

> How the AAA game development industry works.

Still ambiguous, but let's assume you mean AAA = publisher funded (since you contrasted it with independent studios before).

Simple example - most legacy publishers don't even release games for multiple APIs (such as OpenGL), because of costs. I.e. they are hostages of lock-in. That exactly demonstrates the issue above, and the fact that it has a direct impact.

So saying that no one cares about it (or no one is impacted by this tax on the indstry) is completely wrong.