Gaming is in a sad state right now and people don’t even realize it.

I haven't noticed it because I'm watching the AAA gaming industry from afar instead of participating. BotW is about the only game from a major developer that I've given a shit about in the last 10 years, and only that because I'm a sucker for Zelda.

We're in a golden age of indie titles, and they deserve your money a lot more than the Ubisofts and Activisions of the world.

Honestly, a profoundly weird experience that I had recently... was playing Dragonstrike (released in 1992 I think?) for DOS, for the first time.

Objectively this game is the very definition of 'limited by the technology of its time'. It's a flight sim made before a mouse was a standard computer accessory. I think the biggest in-game sprites are maybe 50 by 50 pixels. It's outstandingly difficult to play.

And yet... compared to modern games, when I'm playing this, it really just hits me over and over again how they made every single decision correctly. The game has an excellent premise. The storytelling may be simple but it's good. The core gameplay loop is fun, and your kit feels like it's complete and well-made, and there's no stupid gacha mechanics or grinding or oversexualized poster girl or daily quests to try and force you to play X amount of hours. It's just for fun. And it IS fun, despite the most unbelievably dated graphics I've ever seen. If this game was made just a few years later, it would've been outstanding.

....but nowhere near the amount and quality of gaming in, say, the NES days where there are more high quality games on that single console than there has been on every console in the last 15 or so years.

Now lets not romanticize older systems. As someone who grew up playing the original NES, I agree the console had a MASSIVE library of games in its hayday, but I would say less than half of them were even worth a shit. But you're right, current consoles are simply leaning hard on "Look at how pretty it is" rather than actual quality gameplay.