Back in the 8-bit era, developers were severely limited by the hardware. Artists could only display 12 colours on screen at any one time and could only have 64 in the game total, memory and storage were also big issues.
These days, such limitations don’t really exist and in the last two generations, it’s gone the other way where technology is there but limited by humans – either through lack of skill/knowledge or cost.
AI and tools such as UE5 should help to rebalance some of this over the next few years. AI can already handle repetitive engine work and graphics. Music and voice acting are not far away.
As for bad management – with AAA games you do have to have strong leadership. If you think, a director may have 300+ people working on his or her vision and all of those individuals are going to have opinions on how something should be done. Insomniac certainly seem to be doing something right there because you never really hear anything from them and they always release excellent, well-polished games so there’s definitely something that can be said for that argument too.
