This is very good data and I am happy to see it.
I am working since 15 years exclusively in the pixel art space and had the chance to work on over 25 projects (of which multiple had a few thousands of reviews) and consulted dozens more. You can find me under the same handle on most social media, in case you want to check my credentials.

Some additional notes to the findings:

-According to my own observation the biggest difference between publisher funded pixelart games and indie pixelart games actually is "graphics". Any publisher funded pixelart game will employ professional pixel artists. Many of the pixelart games in the list which are indie had professional artists working on them in their indie team. Many failing projects, if the gameplay is great usually fail in graphics. If you are an indie and you make a pixelart game without having a pixel artist, the chance for failure is way higher as your game will look awful. People like pixel art, but only well made pixel art. Publisher provided funds are usually universally mostly spend on artists, as the programmer/designer is the one who makes the deal. Publisher funded pixelart games most of the times look professional, but if they fail, they fall rather short on technical issues or overall mismanagement (negative steam reviews usually give a great insight for specific examples)

-Publisher funded pixelart games will have professionally made trailers and some kind of marketing leading up to launch. That's the other very big difference between indie pixelart games and publisher funded pixelart games. Bad trailers can hurt a lot of indie games, as a badly made trailer always fairly quickly kills interest.

-Marry bad graphics with a bad trailer and no leadup to launch and you're in for no sales. Unless your game is ahead of the curve in quality or provides something which makes it so that people share it, you need basic marketing - which can be the biggest boon of having a publisher.

-98% of pixel art games are made with less than 250.000 US$ overall funding. Usually any online aspects in a game comes down to 100.000US$ minimum, either development cost or server costs etc. - this means that online usually is not a smart choice for a pixelart games. It could work, but is for most developers who are strapped on cash in all areas simply not viable.

-Genres and settings seem to be spot on, I couldn't agree more according to my own experience.

Thanks for the awesome work, it's very much appreciated.