Honestly, I don't remember the era where there were no great games to play. It's just that the amount of noise these days on stores is so big that a lot of good games get buried under all that (and as I said, with rapid advances in AI tech, soon there will be way more noise).

True.  Cocoon felt ignored despite being superb.  Back in the 80s and early 90s great games were far and few, droughts were common.  Today there are so many great games it is hard to keep up.

Yeah, that's investing for ya. If you aren't exceeding yourself every quarter, you are failing even though you are making tons of money. I hate it, the world would be a better place without this demand for endless growth. It's an illusion anyways, it's impossible to sustain indefinitely.
One just has to hope that our favorite things will somehow endure.

One of the reasons I don't agree that big games are unsustainable is because if profit margins were higher, shareholders would still want more.  Spider 2 and Ratchet made a profit, budget isn't the real issue.  Greed is.  If ratchet made 2x shareholders would want 4x.  It doesn't stop.  

Yeah... no. Big budget AAA experiences and more reasonable budgets are not mutually exclusive things. If hardware sales are stagnant and software sales only increase marginally, then you simply have to look at ways to keep your costs under control instead of having development costs make big jumps each generation.

Microsoft isn't set up for the future. Digital is nothing special and available on all major gaming platforms, so I don't know why you even mention it. PC is always there and steady because there's no such thing as generations in PC gaming, so a sharp increase in popularity is just as unlikely as a sudden implosion. Streaming is what Microsoft had high hopes for, but it's not taking off; input delay and lack of game ownership are big reasons why and these are inherent flaws that can't and won't be fixed.

But they did not.

Don't make the same mistake as this biased Polygon article that conflates developers with non-development staff. People who work in marketing and translating aren't anywhere close to as valuable as developers and we've seen the results of Nintendo's change in translation practices already, because these layoffs date back about a decade. Since then the quality of translations in Nintendo games hasn't changed in a measureable degree despite the switch from having their own translators to contract work with third party companies.

Again, you are not understanding. Sony's approach in making games is very different to Nintendo's. Nintendo focus on Gameplay and X factor, stuff that sells well on a hybrid system; Sony rely on graphics and cinematic story telling. Graphics and Cinematic story telling games isn't why people buy Switches. You don't have to look that far back when Sony tried when it was Vita vs 3DS. Sony isn't going to have Studios like Naughty Dog, pay them premium dollars just to make mid tier platformers again. We have seen this before.

Now before you counter argue by bringing up high performance hybrid systems like the Steam Deck. This is the thing, Steam's ecosystem drawfs Sonys and MS games when it comes to variety and sheer quantity. People buy Switches and Steam Decks for variety of games. Sony want photo realism and that contradicts that direction, if they decide to dumb down hardware to make portable hardware in the future. 

As much as you hate to hear it, MS is well set up for the future, they are failing to compete in the hardware market but they have been building a solid foundation. They own their own Cloud Network, the PC Operating system, Created GamePass, and most importantly brought studios that can deliver Online, Multiplayer, GAAS games that match the direction they are heading. This is why if hardware disappeared tomorrow, Xbox would still continue like they always have been and making money from software via Xbox play anywhere etc. Sony and Nintendo not so much, they rely heavily on their own hardware.

This is why we are seeing Sony and Xbox open up to PCs, they need more customers because they know it's not coming from the console market, its stagnated. We will see what Sony and Xbox have up their sleeves for their next hardware showings, maybe Sony might dip in the hybrid market again or maybe Xbox might dip into VR tech. That I don't know.

...if you ignore the PC, iOS and Android as gaming platforms.

I doubt that the Switch games revenue will be higher than $38Bn, if the total of Switch, PlayStation + Xbox is at $53.2Bn:

Annual hardware revenue for gaming PCs is probably also a lot higher, when already most GPUs cost more than complete consoles.

I think its a pride problem.

I should have clarified "video game console" that said that doesn't really disprove the point I was making. 

Switch + mobile combined would be over 50% of the market comfortably by the chart you posted there, which makes them the majority of video game platforms, those are what most people would term "lower end platforms", but they are the market majority. 

It's really not consumers en masse that are pushing Sony/MS/certain 3rd parties to keep increasing their budgets ridiculously, even if you look at the top selling games every year, it's not like they are the best looking games. 

Call of Duty looks solid, but it's not like those games are a technical showcase any longer. Hogwarts Legacy got a big boost last year from a scaled down looking Switch port and also runs on last gen consoles. Tears of the Kingdom might be the no.1 selling game but Nintendo doesn't include their digital data (which must have been significant) to NPD so we can't compare directly, but as is it was up there as one of the best selling games last year. This year already you have Palworld putting up monster numbers. 

Spider-Man 2 cost significantly more than Spider-Man 1 to make for example ($300 million vs. $180 million) ... is it going to sell 60% more copies? I doubt it. The hilarious thing is I don't even think the graphics bump there was even that great given how much more money they spent making the game. Like if that's all an extra $120 million (almost double your budget) gets you, that's pretty sad. 

"Graphics whores" are actually a small portion of the market, to increase your budgets 50%, 60% every 5-6 years to chase this audience is stupid, people are losing their jobs because now Sony/MS/EA/other 3rd parties are hitting the panic button realizing their costs are skyrocketing but the profits are not growing in line with the rising costs. 

That's not really even greed, that's just business reality, there's no business on the planet where you could increase their costs by 50% and the business is just going to go "ho hum, no big deal, lets not react to that at all". Like some people are really oblivious to how a business runs. 

I'm a little surprised PS hasn't started charging $90 for the biggest AAA games. If they have the biggest budgets and are worthy of tens of millions of sales, then surely they can charge more for those.
Same would go for lesser games however. You can't just charge $90 for everything. The price has to be a reasonable reflection of the games input and value assuming consumers agree.

I also don't think SNY is solely doing it out of greed. Some of it is due to going overboard when covid hit, and some of it I believe is SNY trying to profit as quickly as possible for more consolidation. That may seem backwards when they're laying off people, but if the competition has that goal and can afford it, then you have little choice but to follow. I wouldn't be surprised one bit if PS announces they've made another Bungie sized acquisition this year.
Remember, everyone is hurting, which is the time to buy if you can afford to, and since MS can afford to and wants to consolidate, SNY needs to make moves as well if they can. As long as MS keeps acquiring, SNY needs to increase profits asap so they can also acquire.