Well put, Gillissie. In fact it is very possible for a one-man studio to produce very solid games, as evidenced by the developers on this site, which for the most part are small one (or 2-3) man operations. Stormcloud Creations is basically just me, with some 3rd party help with some background graphics. Otherwise everything else (coding, buttons/interface and game design and most of the beta testing) is done only by me.
And I second the "not easy" thought. The road was long and tough, I felt like giving up lots of times, and I often had little support or help (in fact I had many people telling me it couldn't be done and that I was wasting my time). These days, I just send those people a link to the Shrapnel homepage and smile.