Awful is different. That would imply that they only released bad games or that they never attempted worldwide relevance. They had lot of good games on PS2, Gamecube and Xbox in the early 2000's. Super Monkey Ball, Jet Set Radio Future, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Shinobi, Virtua Fighter 4. Afterwards they had a few really well done western projects like Sega Rally Revo or Condemned, and Japanese IP like Yakuza, Valkyria Chronicles, VF5 and Bayonetta (granted that was in tall end of 09).
Really, I don't think Sega has changed that much from the 00's to the 10's. Sure, they made a promise to not deliver red metactitic contenders like Sonic Boom and Alien: Colonial Marines, but that is kinda it. They still have released rather middling contenders where people have been dissapointed like Sonic Forces, Monkey Ball Banana Blitz HD and Valkyria Revolution. In that regard, Sega has not changed yet. They always released good games, and middling games and sometimes bad games. However the later two happen more rarely, and bad games have not been an issue now.
Sega is not AAA, and are more on the same boat as Bandai Namco. Also the idea that Atlus makes Sega AAA is weird. If anything, the purchase of Atlus is an admit of defeat for Sega that they will not be able to compete with the big boys, and rather stay in the niche. Atlus is still niche and small. They have only about 150 employees and it was only this month that they actually released a game with additional european languages (Persona 5 Royal).
