The reason why most AAA devs do not pursue development of games focused on physics is because it's damn hard to find a good gameplay loop to them. Breth of the Wild was above everything else experimental on its nature, they tried to see what they could do with emergent gameplay. The result was a masterpiece, but boy this game could have ended being a complete failure and bombed hard due to clunky controls and bad design 

Remember most AAA devs do not pursue big changes in gameplay design, they want to try copy and pasted gameplay experiences that were already tested and proven to be successful, like... is any argument about Cybperunk not being just a sci-fi GTA?

It's hard to tell your stakeholders you're doing a hundred of millions budget game that yo have no idea if costumers will actually like since its mostly new. As there was no big example of highly successful title with gameplay focused on physics before BOTW hence the AAA studios were simply seeing no reason to bet their money in such dangerous pursuit 

After BOTW came out unsurprisingly Ubisoft released their Zelda Clone, Immortal Fenyx Rising, rather quickly. A charming game that was mildly fun to play, although its lack of criativity was jarring. This means AAA studios can pursue games with emergent gameplay focused on physics if they want to, they don't do that because they have no fucking clue of how create a fun game that will sell millions without an already proved formula and are not willing to dump money for 10 years straight experimenting blindingly until they came out with something that is good enough to release and sell millions.

You're getting in weirder and weirder tangents trying to defend your comments instead of just admitting errors. Yeah, people still use Havok engine, but you know people also still use Unreal Engine, that came out 1998. But thing is, both engines aren't the same as they were at the time they came out. They have been modified since and had a lot of releases.

Finally a reasonable post here. 

LOL look how far unreal 5 has advanced compared to where games physics are today. watch the video and it clearly shows what i'm talking how the AAA industry has been stagnant   

Physics engines themselves (PhysX, Havok, etc.) aren't getting worse - its how games used them. Around 2011-2013, this sort of shift in mentality happened. Large developers started realising that physics don't sell as much as graphics do - you can't put interactivity on the box. So, its not that physics engines themselves (usually independent middleware from the engine itself) are getting worse, its that games just don't care anymore to use them to their full potential, because management doesn't understand the value of interactivity of an environment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O-vnHLV-qM

It was one year just for polishing. They obviously tested if everything works while developing all of these systems.

Havok has been constantly updated though. It's like saying that graphics haven't been pushed because we are still using Unreal Engine like we were 20 years ago. 

Not to mention that physics calculations are very limited to the power of the console that you are using, so even if you were to use the exact same engine on, say, the GameCube, the Switch would be able to do so much more with it because it can run the calculations much faster. 

More devs share their praise:

https://www.ign.com/articles/game-developers-share-the-most-mind-blowing-inspiring-elements-of-tears-of-the-kingdom

"Tears of the Kingdom is overwhelmingly impressive. The bar is set so unbelievably high. Even for me, having worked in AAA for 17 years, I see that game and I'm jealous. Because clearly they got the time that they needed to make it really good." 

"I don't think Zelda's design is something that can be learned or copied without incredible effort — Nintendo is just full of world class talent working in an environment that's letting them realize their full potential. The result is masterpieces like Tears of the Kingdom."

"The open world is probably the best-constructed open world ever. I can drop you anywhere in the Tears of the Kingdom map and you can spin your camera around, and if you see a space that looks like something should be there, you will be rewarded for going there. Every single time… And that just isn't a thing I think any other open world game is even close to."

Unreal engines are next generation versions they are not just updates. Unreal 3 took 2 years to make.

Nintendo is uniquely positioned sure its hardware is limited compared to others but as long as the switch is seen by Nintendo to be still fit for purpose then there is also an upside that helps inform Nintendo's strengths, some of these strengths can be seen by taking notice of the problems in cost and time we are seeing involving big AAA games. a demonstration of this is looking at the time it took to develop just the first part of FF7R compared to the original,now my thoughts turn to what would the outcome have been if they had to settle for something closer to say Persona 5 visuals  than what we eventually got with FF7R. By using Persona 5 as an example, I don't mean a FF7 that apes Persona 5's look but a FF7 that is comparable to the point that if you Ok with the visuals playing Persona 5 you would be Ok with FF7.this is to me the upside of a Console like the Switch.

While I know it's just a romantic notion In my eyes the open world Zelda games especially with the tech gap between the Switch and PS5/ SeriesX  come across as being as close as we have ever gotten to the dream of a game that combines the strengths of an indie gaming philosophy/mindset along with the benefit of top quality production.

Time to stop running off on tangents and return to the point at hand, to me a lot of this acclaim while well deserved should be showered on the work done on BOTW, the strong foundation of BOTW and the benefits gained from turning TOTK into a sequel rather than build a new world from scratch shouldn't be underestimated since it meant they had more time to turn their efforts toward refining and populating the world and the systems that underpin it, that along with the lessons learned from BOTW in turn aids how well the new features operate and I'm sure a lot of the 12 months spent polishing was directed at play testing and further developing the feature set.

It was just over a year ago that I saw devs losing their mind over Judgment's character walking up and down stairs because he steps on every step and has no clipping. That's just an insane amount of work. I saw a lot of devs quoting this and such.

Then there was the bread in Yakuza 7. Games that look great and aim for realism. I am no longer impressed with how shiny graphics are but with how things behave in the world. So little things like this impress me more than RT by a million times. However, it's just one thing. Then I play ToTK on my Switch and while on a technical level, it's looking a little rough on a 4k TV. All that washes away when you see how things behave in the world. You can def have it both ways if a dev wants. I'm not making an argument to side with anything btw. This is a standalone post. Where I just feel the time and era of shinier graphics aren't that impressive. Most games look good enough but few games take that extra step. Animations. Inworld behaviors should be a higher focus from now on. 8th generation we finally moved past concrete bushes.