And games dont need to be extremely unique or innovative to be great either, if all you play are risk taking games you arent going to play many games.
What current gen games play like Gow? You haved dmc kind of? The gameplay in Gow is second to none. Same with tlou2 it plays as good as anything. I'll take quality over innovation of the innovative game isn't fun (see no man's sky).
People strangely use production values against Sony s as if it diminishes their games or something, it only enhances the experience. Or they group games that don't play anything like each other simply because they are high production. It's super reductive and a lazy argument imo
There's absolutely nothing wrong with having good production valus as such of course, who doesnt enjoy impressive visuals, animation, sound design and so on? But the problem with rising development costs is mainstream releases going more and more risk averse to recoup costs... Just a couple of generatons ago the games that qualified as high budget games used to be hell of a lot more varied, encompassing more genres etc.. now a lot of those types of niches are being catered to by the indies that are generally relatively small teams budget.