You're glossing over a lot. There was consoles back then that exceed the price of the PRO when you take inflation into account. Games actually were more taking the same into account. Etc. 

Eh, we had more disposable income back then, no crazy inflation. Life was generally more affordable. Middle class was doing great back then.

PS1 launched at $299 in 1995, adjusted for inflation $549 today
SNES launched at $199 in 1990, adjusted for inflation $407 today.
N64 launched at $199 in 1996, adjusted for inflation $360 today.

Games cost $50 in 1995, adjusted for inflation $91

However no extra costs, no strings attached. But yes, Nintendo cartridges were expensive.
Controllers were a lot cheaper back then and more durable (but less features)



However the main difference is, everyone was looking forward instead of backwards in the 90s. Nowadays the focus feels to be on playing older games in different ways, upscaled, higher fps, mobile etc. In the 90s there was wonder looking forward to the next generation / next miracle game blowing your mind.

I do like the demo's can carry data over now but PS1 Underground/PSM discs were amazing. From game demos of course to dev interviews. Tips and tricks and other things. It was a feeling of discovery.

And there is a reason CDi/3DO failed. Aside from crap libraries but also insane prices. 700 bucks. 1400 or so today. The only outlier to that is NEO GEO AES. That made sense it was the peak era of Arcades and Arcades were generally much more powerful than consoles. So a system as powerful as an Arcade made sense at 600 bucks. It was for a niche enthusiast market. Games are not capable is running on anything else at the time aside from an Arcade machine. The added bonus was you could take your save data via a memory card to an arcade.

My aunt bought a CDi, what a pos that was already back then. Cool tech for the time maybe but nothing fun to play on it.

Amiga 500 launched in 1987, amazing system, yet $700 as well. It was much more than a console, it was basically a gaming computer. (And blew PCs out of the water back then when it came to games)

That's another plus point, lot more choice between distinct hardware systems. Now there's really no significant different between a Series X and PS5. and Switch  the only dedicated handheld.

The cheaper systems (PS and Nintendo) went on, the rest went bust. Dreamcast the exception, launched at $199 in 1998, only lasted 3 years. (But what a fun 3 years those were!)

Nostalgia is powerful. But I think old gamers have rose tinted glasses. I remember blocky graphics, punishing difficulty, long gaps between save points, terrible framerates, short wired controllers, limited BC and having to own tons of hardware to play all the top games.

Games are better today, better balanced with way better controls.  Hardware is way better as well.  

Edit

Old games have terrible controls and awful camera angles.  And I remember having memory cards everywhere.

Oh you don’t like some of the things that makes games worth the time to play and is lacking in most games from bigger studios today.

I like, and think there are way to few, games with punishing difficulty and long gaps between save point (that add to the difficulty and add consequences for stupid actions in game). And no, don’t bring up Dark Souls games, they are not difficult because of good game design, they are difficult because of poor and clunky controls.

I voted false in the poll, but it’s not entirely black and white. The up side to today is that you have access to a large back log of games (even if a lot of older games are hard to get or really fiddly to get running on modern hardware).

But in general for games there is way to much focus on just making things look nice but with the blandest of game plays (specially true for games from bigger studios). Add to this way to many games that are basically MTX hell and I would say we are far from the ”golden age” of gaming.

Creativity is mostly found in indies, the problem there is that there are 500 bland rehashes with pixel graphics for every interesting game that makes the gems really hard to find. Sure, there where a lot of duds in all previous eras of gaming, but the sheer amount of games being released today compared to previously makes the gems much much harder to find and pick out even if you try to research them and read forums and reviews.

I'm not entirely sure what you are saying but QoL have gotten better with time.  Zelda, dying and starting with 3 hearts is annoying.  Zelda 2, dying in a dungeon and starting back at start is annoying.

The things above are not good design.  Battletoads, on the NES, is flatly punishing, especially two player.  

Games are more balanced now. 

Edit

Actraiser 2, MDK2, etc.  Good luck playing those games.  Christ the difficulty is brutal to the point of no fun.

No map in the original Metroid wasn't good design.  

Verry false!
6th gen whas peak gaming.

Feels like alot of RPGs have done very well... so its not a bad time to be a gamer.