Unfortunately true. I’ve been waiting for a game like starfield for decades now, i’ve been hyped and disappointed by star citizen, elite dangerous, dual universe, NMS and probably many other smaller games, trying to chase down that freelancer spark once more. I won’t buy it at full price for sure, but at this point I’m desperate enough to give even Todd a new chance. I really want it to be at least adequate.
Valheim was one of the best selling games and is still a huge success. Indies are getting better and more popular to the point that even big companies like Nexon are indiewashing their studio and pretending that Dave the Diver is an indie game with pixel art instead of a work of one of the biggest publishers there is. In my experience most of the gamers nowadays are people that grew up on minecraft, terraria or probably more likely today - roblox.
So basically no, I don’t think so. Maybe big studios want you to believe that and it might be true for a casual FIFA or CoD gamer but for anyone else, there are more options than ever and the supply of good smaller simpler games is just overwhelming, the days are too short to even keep track of them anymore.