Didn't get most profitable award?

[weary surge]

A bit confused; I've been getting 4 out of 4 awards for the last few consecutive years in a run I've been doing. The one that was just occurred, made 3 of 4, but not "most profitable." This is confusing, as the "best product" award usually gets the most profitable, and also because it grossed > $100,000,000. Additionally, in the timeframe from the rewards month (June) for the last year, my company is the only company with any software releases -- that's because I have been buying all IPs when they come out, and/or taking over companies as they release products. I immediately archive the product and essentially eliminate all possible competing products -- trying to play Monopoly, Inc. here.

This is also confusing because I believe other years when I have released a console and it sold a lot of units, but I'm selling the console at below cost, I think I have received the most profitable award.

I'm just trying to better understand the game logic -- I view the game as something like an optimization puzzle. Any input here on why this would have happened, I'd appreciate it.

[bitter vale]

You would need to know what released and how much said release by your competition made. Go to the Market/All Software, search by type and then year range and sort that by profit to see the results to answer your question...

[weary surge]

yes, i looked at that and no other software in the same period had been released that made more profit

in the specific playthrough im referring to, i had been "zombieing" the companies so that they only had one release, thus any release that came up, at midnight i could buy it for essentially zero. i then did not support/market them. while there had been some that quite a few $ (around $7 million) their first month, all the software i had in that same period had made more. either i'm missing something, or it seems like a slightly broken mechanism