>>720275557
Anyway side thing I want to add onto this because I just remembered; That's another huge reason why I personally dropped Nintendo. I mentioned it briefly earlier, but historically (especially from N64 onwards) they had this tendency to just drop what worked and never evolve. I've tried several switch games, and they all have this core theme of subversion due to notions of what people even wanted when the "formula" argument started floating around. To me, Nintendo peaked in gameplay with the SNES era, they carried that ethos somewhat with 3D as best they could but obviously had to some concessions with the new medium.
But I feel like after 64, they have done nothing but regress. Sure you can argue whatever you want about the GCN/6th gen era, too short dev times, too many splintered projects, technology moving too fast, but by the time 7th gen rolled around, they doubled down on some false premise solely because of the Wii's reach. Then nonstop you would hear almost everywhere on the internet that Nintendo got stale, sterile, their formulas are all boring, etc etc.
The ONLY reason why that is, was because they never once bothered to add onto what they established in the 64 era. They did nothing but remove, take away, make things easier, and tutorialize. If Nintendo gave the amount of decision making respect as they used to, I'm sure people would look onto the GCN>Wii>Wii U era much more favorably.
I'd like to think that there is no such thing as "antiquated gameplay" or whatever, there are many concepts that could've just been expanded on. Yet a majority of the formulas drastically altered their appeal and genres for no real reason when they could've just taken any risks with it. Not to say their shifts now aren't "risks", but they come off more as aiming to do less under the guise of more for money, or just trend chasing for easy money. It's why I can't really see them as "the last bastion of fun". Maybe in exclusively AAA, but that bar is extremely low.