There are studios that routinely put out games that people love. For example, my wife and I will happily pre-order the next co-op game from Hazelight Studios. FromSoftware, Ghost Ship Games, and others fall into the same boat for many people.
The difference, in my opinion, is that games from these studios don't focus on creating an "always on" service, microtransactions, day-1 DLC, MRR, etc. Those things that blight games made by corporate studios are evidence of corporate executives putting their thumb on the scale.
There's only so much you can do, as a developer, to polish a turd.
I wish devs would stop trying to make every game an uber-game. They need all the monetization because they've already blown the budget before work even started.
Nintendo figured this out. When will the other big players?
I'm curious what you mean by this. It seems like gamers have never been more vocal and there have never been more avenues (social media, short form video platforms, etc.) for them to voice their opinions than we have now.
How exactly do you know that developers have never been more disconnected from their audience? And how would that be relevant to declining AAA game quality when it's the responsibility of management and leadership to ensure the quality of the final product?
This is a trope that's more than a few years out of date. Silicon Valley is run by Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, and many other executives who are completely devoted to the current administration; even Tim Cook bent the knee and donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration.
And what does "far left" mean in this context? Is it the abolition of private property and the creation of a communist utopia? Or are we talking about basic equal rights and a slightly more progressive tax system?
Without a bit more clarity, comments like yours come off as being uninformed at best, ignorant at worst.
I’d be curious what you think the changes in dev culture are. I have worked for or with a lot of these studios and to me they have different cultures. But I could be missing the forest for the trees. MSFT has one culture that imo lacks a creative vision.