The problem is that the market has basically bifurcated. In the Indie space, people want novelty, and that's too risky for AAA (even 10 year old AAA) scale games. Over in the modern AAA space, you've got a more reliable user base (in that they're more eager to buy slight changes to the same game over and over), but you're competing more on "Wow" factor. And ever-better graphics have been a pretty easy way to convert investment into "wow", without much risk (compared to changing game mechanics more, which might kill your golden goose).

I find it far more plausible that AI-assisted game dev will help indies catch up in scale to 10 year old AAA than the modern AAA studios deciding to throw in the towel on the graphics arms race.