This is also in part why I conceptually like Microconsoles assuming they aren’t disposable. Though no one has really been able to succeed at that game.
I’d be hard pressed to say when we turned the corner exactly. However at some point the industry stopped asking if games were fun. They ask now instead “does it drive user engagement?” This strikes me as pathological.
As budgets soar, and game failures become more prone to killing whole studios; I kind of find myself kinda wishing for a second great video game crash. Their are plenty of people and institutions I would hate to see go; but the industry as a whole could really use reboot.