I think a major problem is AAA game development takes so fucking long that if you’re chasing a trend you’re at a colossal disadvantage because you’re betting that in half decade tastes haven’t drastically changed or that your competitors haven’t cooked up something new and unique that makes your game look old and out of touch on release. It’s so different than the 90s where game development took about a year or so, and every year something would come out that blows the previous years games out of the water. For example, in the span of 7 years from 1992 to 1999 id software went from Wolfenstein to Doom to Quake to Quake 2 then Quake 3 and each of those were significant leaps over their predecessors in graphics and gameplay. These days a game can take half a decade or more to make and it maybe brings nothing new to the table at all.
