There have always been bright spots but things gradually got worse from like 2000 forward, got MUCH worse from 2010 forward, and then got better again from 2015 forward.

2011-2014 were so bad I would probably struggle to put together a list of even ten games I like from those years. I was mostly watching anime and playing my PS2 backlog at the time. Honestly without the DS you could push that range all the way back to 2006. The window between Okami and Bloodborne/Splatoon is tremendously depressing if you don't want to play handheld games.