Not trying to sound like I have rose tinted glasses or whatever but lots of my favorite AA+ games, including AAA, are so low effort now. My favorite game ever is World of Warcraft, and it's just shocking seeing how little content you get for your $15 a month. They have been drip feeding it for years, now they are going so far as to sell early access to the next expansion for even more money. It's insane to me. People will pay $30 extra just to access the exact same amount of content, for just a few days earlier. That's crazy.
Another game that I have really come to enjoy lately is Genshin impact from Hoyo. This is a gacha game, But it's still relatively fun to play with no monetary investment at all because of how generous they are with being able to obtain the in-game currency, the entire storyline basically is available without any paywall. Cannot say this for a lot of games. You want to play the new Call of Duty or something, $70 minimum. You want to play Starfield, $70. That game was not even half finished upon release and they are still working on it! So gacha games aren't exactly a bad deal if you take that into account. $0 investment some people spend hundreds on it of course. But still, they are for the most part extremely high quality...
Zenless Zone Zero though is so low effort it's crazy. It's just a half-hearted eroge/erotica game. It launched with tons of questionable imagery of imaginary women who are very young, they look like they are 15 years old or younger and half dressed. No healer like other games, so content is extremely challenging. They ignored most feedback from the beta about game features that people didn't enjoy like the TV system which is globally hated by everyone, and there were tons of comments on their official forums back in December of people saying they didn't like the system and that it was a really bad system, they launched it in this terrible state anyway even knowing people didn't like it. Now, after release, still no healer like other games, there's no support system like star rail and Genshin have so you can't have a friend to come help you, you can't borrow a character from someone else. The game is literally half finished garbage and people are just raving over it because of skimpy characters who look like they are 12 years old. Like wow....
I could give you a dozen more examples but these are the ones that are most obvious to me.
People keep paying for it so why put more effort into it? When they do it doesn’t seem to pay off. The last game I bought from a big publisher was Hi Fi Rush. It was fantastic, original, clearly had more thought and effort out into it than the average AAA game, and look what happened to them. Hopefully their transition to a new owner turns out to be a positive one, but considering the industry trends I’m not holding my breath on that one.
This is why I do the patient gamers thing. I almost always wait for sales, bundles, etc. Most of my games come in at a deep discount, and the only ones I grab at a slight discount are because it’s got stellar reviews, had enough time to see how the updates, MTX bullshit, or servers played out, and is clearly still interesting enough to be worth both my money and time.
Isthereanydeal.com is my best friend for this. Gog.com is also great. Humblebundle.com is still occasionally worth looking at.