You can render 3D models to a pretty convincing sprite sheet, if you try hard enough.

Look at Donkey Kong Country or Factorio.

Things have actually stanbilized since the early days of the PS3/360. Now we have a huge variety of games from AAA 300+ person teams, to solo projects thanks to PlayStation Store, Windows/Xbox Store, E-shop, Steam, amoung other digital platforms.

I don't think there is any issue with the current state of development on PS4/XBO. With the way Switch is selling, and the massive titles Nintendo has in development, I think things are going to go well there as well. Hopefully the Switchs success will lead to a new PlayStation Mobile, and we will have a healthy mobile gaming space again in the next decade.

The only place lacking the AAA man power currently is VR. Being such a young format, I think things are fine right now, but after taking in 100's of hours of VR in the last year, I am ready for AAA games to get deshackled from the outdated display and controller tech. The Indies and Start ups are doing an excellent job, even offering some titles that skim the line between AA and AAA, but we need more giant devs and pubs to give it the support we have seen from Bethesda. Hopefully we can get decent sized VR expereinces from games Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and Studios like Nughty Dog, Guerilla, and Santa Monica on current VR, so they are ready to hit the ground running next gen

Mario Kart on the Nintendo 64 used 3D generated models converted into sprites for characters and many objects.

Even many games today continue to use sprites.
Overwatch will use them for some of their particle effects... Dragon Age: Inquisition was using them for their fog effects.

The biggest problem is the alocation of resources within most big budget games. Most of the time it feels like it’s 98% visual resources and 2% on the rest. This makes a lot of games look nice and shiney but actually play like crap or simply be a reskin of a older game (that might have been good in it’s own time).

Put more resorces into concept, mechanics and bug fixing/testing. Less on visuals.

Stop making AAA games ,start making AA games more then sell them at 60$.

This post gets it.  Hollywood is the same way. A film like Moon was made with little budget and still looked great and was a great film, same with Chronicle.  Lost Soul is an upcoming PS4 game made by 1 person. Zelda the GOTY of 2017 only needed 2 million sold to break even in an era where games like it need 7+ million sold to break even.

So you feel sorry for the AAA publishers that are raking in hundreds of millions in profit? Yeah, AAA games are too expensive, let's all feel sorry about EA and Activision Blizzard.

Also, buy more lootboxes! They really need the cash. Did you know they even have to pay people who design lootboxes? They've really fallen on hard times.

Here, have some more koolaid and do some crate opening.

lol you could'nt came up with a better exemple ? seriously Destiny, what about that turd makes you think "high tech" and that high techiness is a selling point? 

Not really. The cost of video games is not only very inflated, but most companies that argue games are too expensive to make are using it in the context of supporting their questionable controversial buisiness transactions. That's pretty important to remember, because it is more like an excuse than a plea with the general public. It is

The total budget of GTA V was $15m higher than MW2.
However if we take inflation into account, then yes, MW2 was a bit more expensive.