Sure if a company can get both its the better. But it is better for a game to sell,  like, 5 million within two year steadily selling weekly or to sell a lot first week and month and not holding legs? In West most game even with big releases seems to hold legs well, but in Japan sales tend to be extreme front-loaded thanks to the used market. 

Long tails are definitely better, and tend to bode well for possible sequels. Look at Watch Dogs 2, the first one boomed out to a huge opening week and then kind of faded, and the 2nd one came out to much lower numbers. 

I think its better to get laid often and consistently than to have 1 awesome sexual experience and none afterwards.

Obviously more sales right at launch are better. Because people pay some serious cash for games at launch. After some months or years, many games only sell for 3 bucks in steam sales. You don't make money with something like that.

First of all you're wrong. All high profile games are heavily front loaded, that has nothing to with the west or Japan.

Of course front loaded sales are always better for the company. More money, more buzz and if the game fizzles out fast enough they don't have to support it anymore and concentrate on the next big game.

Front loaded is better for the company, as early copies sell at a premium, but long tailed is better for the player base, as it means there will always be a steady stream of new players coming in, keeping the servers active.

Of course that's obly for multiplayer titles.

Front loaded sales are better. While the game is still full price, profits all round!

I'm sure every single gaming company out there will rather sell 6M copies of their game in 6 weeks at $60/game ($360M) then sell 4M more over the next 1yr at an average price of $20 ($80M) than to sell 1M copies at $60 ($60M) then sell 9M copies at an average price of $20 ($180M) over the next 2yrs.

In one scenario the company makes $440M in a little over a year and in the other they make $240M over two years.

But a game can sell much on first 6 weeks and keep selling for a very long time. I mean, you are giving an example for 2 years. But the game can hold legs for much more time. If i`m not mistaken the first StarCraft only sold one million in it`s first year and 10 years later it was still selling steadily. Blizzard games tend to be extreme long tails games, and a extreme long tail might be nice too. 

There were also the case of those brain training series that sold like 30 k on first week and managed to amount 15 million after many years.

Long legs are better. First week sales you have forgettable games like The Division,STEEP or even good forgotten games like Pandora's Tower,Assault Suit Leynos. Then we have games that really stretched out like Rocket League or Splatoon.