> 99 times out of 100 you need a solid budget to make a solid movie/game.

Sure, but 1 in 100 still gets you dozens of games a year now. There's plenty of genres where the top titles are nowhere near an AAA budget: Hades 2, Silksong, and Claire Obscura all being popular examples from this year, and Factorio being another well known example around here. Even simpler games like Balatro and Vampire Survivor are plenty of fun for some people.

The biggest studios have rarely been the ones producing the best work - budget gets you fancy cinematics and a beautifully rendered 3D world, but it doesn't make level design go any faster. It could plausibly buy better writing, but that requires all the executives to back off and trust the creatives.

And for what it's worth, the big studios are all happy raking in money on mindless remakes - it keeps working for them.

I would argue clair obscur is actually a shooter game seeing the variety of op builds