I think the industry needs a healthy mix of everything. I generally prefer a high production value in games, but I also play AA and some retro remasters sometimes. It depends on the individual game and what it is about.

The standard have risen but so have the tools at developers disposal.
Salaries have risen but so have the cost for the consumer to buy the games.
The level of polish expected have increased but now the ability to fix things after shipping is generally possible.

Many things have changed that increases the cost of development but also a lot of things that should make it cheaper.
I look back at better games created with fraction of the cost of newer installments thinking why they cannot do the same today.

Then i remember a short video I watched regarding the development of Zelda Breath of the Wild. They actually built the game in the style of the first Zelda in order to test the concept they where going for. Todays creation of games is just something else.

If you can deliver a polished quality product it doesn't matter how low the budget is.

Astrobot is a great example, 60 person team, 3 years devtime. Incredibly polished, goty winner.

When you are making a game that will gross over a billion and it's as rough as Scarlett/Violet was you clearly need to be investing more.

Low budget is fine, low quality is not. We need more of the astro bot scale compared to the $200m budget 7 year dev time games.

But what we don't need is them crapping things out at on a shoestring budget that clearly needed more love. Especially if they know they're going to make a crap ton of money even if they invested 10x more in development.

Yakuza/Like a dragon is a series with low Dev times and budget that still produces quality. But even that series is estimated to have a bigger development budget than Pokémon.

The question is irrelevent. Gamers want games that they like.
I won't play call of duty even if it gets 2 billion budget because i don't like playing online shooters.
The only thing i miss from PS1/PS2 era is that because they had low budgets we had variety on games.

The budget of a game doesn't concern me or my purchasing decision. I'll just look at what I get for the amount of money independent on how much it cost to make or market.

One of the best things about going back to the PS2 era of games is how many mid-budget hidden gems there are. Because dev costs were not insane yet. So publishers could release a dozen or half a dozen games a year or more. We got a lot of fun stuff. God Hand would never be allowed to be made today.

I'm more focused on whether the game is fun or not.
That aside, if the budget causes the game price to be too high, then I'd wait for a discount.

The first paragraph: I gotta disagree with you on that. EoW was a very fun and unique experience! Not quite on the same scale as something TotK, but it did end up becoming my most played game last year (~60hr). Plus, experimental games aren’t supposed to be everyone’s “cup of tea.” S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was critically panned despite being below by its player base, for instance.

Middle paragraphs: I agree that the spectacle of those games would not be possible on a smaller budget… though the fact that Horizon is nearly a decade old and the franchise has barely evolved an inch kinda proves my point. Same goes for GoW since 2018 and Spiderman.

That last paragraph: The Pokémon games of the Switch generation are arguably highly experimental and risky: Let’s Go PE, SwSh, ScVi, Legends Arceus, and Legends Z-A all offer radically different perspectives on game. Let’s Go abandoned the traditional catching mechanics of past entries, SwSh stuck close to traditional turn-based combat alongside “Wild Zones,” ScVi was the first open-world Pokémon, Legends Arceus did a complete overhaul on the turn-based combat system, and Legends Z-A similarly introduced an entirely new combat system to the franchise.

The results have been very mixed, but you cannot deny that the small budgets of these games likely encouraged GF to take these risks.

It's not really the budget I guess that's as much of an issue to me. Spider-Man 2 cost around $315 million and yet reused tons of ideas and elements from its predecessors. And it thankfully came out in a reasonable time.
I suppose I want the studios to plan releases better while still treating their employees well. Persona 6 should have been out by now, but Atlus chose to have a lot of smaller Persona titles and remakes of 3 and 4 first. That's less a budget thing and a planning thing for Atlus to milk Persona 3-5 for as long as possible.

Different people want different things from different games.