Obviously worse. There were no microtransactions, day one patches, unfinished games from the developer etc. in the 2006-2008 era.

Worse.

Not because the games and the gaming infrastructure got bad but our beloved gaming companies doesn't seem to care anymore about their fans.

Yes, I'm looking at you Konami!

Worse, great japanese franchises were replaced with generic shooters. Bloodborne is the game of the decade so far. I think it started getting worse since 2010

I should have been jaded in 2006 after gaming since 1980.
There is less variety, the last great mid tier game I played was Majin and the forsaken kingdom, 5 years ago. Indies have picked up the slack somewhat yet are either short or procedurally generated experiences.

Day 1 patches are standard now, pretty much all games release incomplete, load times seem to be getting worse and gameplay is not keeping pace with the improvement of graphics. Games look better, yet the gameplay is the same or worse which makes the quality difference stand out more and more.
Plus I don't like the trend to make everything a variation of the same openworld basic busy work gameplay.

I dunno why particular 2006-2008 but let's check the highlights:  Okami, Dreamfall the longest journey, Super paper mario, Super mario galaxy, Portal, Valkyria chronicles, Wipeout HD, Little big planet, Oblivion, Viva Pinata, Loco roco, Dead rising, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Zack and Wiki, Motorstorm, Fallout 3, Dead space, Mirrors edge. No sequels in there (Dreamfall, Oblivion and Fallout 3 excepted, yet they felt like new games)

Since then we had the excellent Dark souls, Ni No Kuni, The last of us, Rayman Origins, Portal 2, Deus Ex HR, Journey, The walking dead, Fez, Anti chamber in 2011-2013, good fun but less.

The only games that really stuck with me last year were Transistor and Fract OSC. The rest was competent. Driveclub turned out to be excellent yet not really a poster child for a competent release...

There are a lot of competent sequels and great remasters, but originality is lacking and gameplay is stuck in neutral.

Better. It's just that we've become more and more demanding and harder to please.

Well, 2006-2008 had FInal Fantasy XII, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, Kingdom Hearts II, Mass Effect, Super Mario Galaxy, Gears of War, Lost Odyssey, Tales of Vesperia, Okami, Valkyria Chronicles, Super Paper Mario, and Persona 4 capped it all off. Probably one of my favorite periods alongside 1999-2001.

Yeah, I'd say things were better then.

But there were still broken or buggy games and mountains of shovelware.

A lot of ideas in the 7th gen were done in the past but were just done better. Gameplay mechanics are moving foward I just think its diminishing returns. You want fresh ideas and no idea what you really want.

Some of the games you mentioned were creative in presentation, but at their core didnt do much unique for gameplay.

Id like to see a little more creative and unique games. But gameplay for some genres is just fine. So maybe this question depends on what genres you most enjoy.

Feels worse for me, despite having PC as my main I've not really gamed as much in the past year or two due to the shit that's gone on the past few years, this gen doesn't really fill me with joy or eagerness to buy the latest systems, it actually does the opposite, so many studios we've lost over the past decade, the horrid practices that have cropped up compared to what we had back almost a decade and a half ago where we had demos and the like, proper games that didn't require ou to be always connected or having to pass through multiple DRM hoops.

Gaming definitely feels worse today than it was almost 2 decades ago.

Completely agree. Made it an even bigger achievement when Journey surpassed those games in the same style though.