It’s the same for movies, other intangible assets that are valuable and produce income over several years. And it’s done for many tangible goods, like servers in a datacenter, the kitchen equipment in a restaurant.
I think you may misunderstand. For most of those, you get the choice to amortize if you prefer. In this instance, you must amortize, which is a big problem for startups.
For the tangible ones, it's often relatively easy to get financing that lets you spread the payment over the asset's useful life, which solves most of the cash flow issues you get if you pay in cash up front but have to spread the expense over many years.
Your previous comment mixed tangible and intangible. R&D is intangible, so I focused there. Your response mostly applies to tangible. I think the other reply to you here makes a great point. Let's try not to talk past each other!
