AAA games are clearly too expensive to be sustainable. Every new big games has so much money behind it that it can’t afford to fail, leading to a bunch of highly risk-adverse design decisions. With a few exceptions, players are increasingly having to turn to indie games and AA games for unique experiences because AAA games are getting bland.

I’m not convinced that game length is the main issue though. There’s a ton of game mechanic bloat, and far too many games are open world when they would probably be better as a more focused experience. Graphical improvements are also getting increasingly less important, with it getting harder and harder to see new improvements. Switch/indies/AA/etc clearly show that you can have great looking games without spending a huge amount of money on chasing realism in graphics.