Now you gotta like that picture
I see the "before" but where's the "after"?
P.S. bustr, I don't think anything is changing per se. I've seen other games with similar retail schemes. Counter-Strike for example. The core game itself is still created by the original people, the packaging and details of getting out to stores, etc, is what this Iceberg company is doing. So they're just re-selling the game in a package. Everything you say is true, HTC can do whatever they like, but in this case I've seen a few games go this retail route and I'm not worried about radical changes at HTC because of it.
EDIT: I think the only change might be more Euro players. This could just be a savvy push to get more players/customers because of flagging subscriptions due to really piss-poor US economy the past years.