This is coming from someone who now has no free time for video games, and only plays indie roguelikes because AAA games are too much of a time commitment to ever finish.
This is coming from someone who now has no free time for video games, and only plays indie roguelikes because AAA games are too much of a time commitment to ever finish.
By sales, the highest-selling games are [1] Minecraft (now AAA), Grand Theft Auto V (AAA), EA Tetris, PUBG (before becoming freemium), Mario games, Pokémon, Terraria, and Red Dead Redemption 2.
So by sales, the vast majority of top-selling games are AAA. For what it's worth, I think similarly to you about preferring indie games to AAA games due to lack of time. But for most gamers and people in general, I don't think people even calculate the 40-60 hours per week. Most players probably just spend a lot of free time and weekend days gaming, and then the hours add up.
You do have a point that a large number of players play free-to-play games (e.g. League of Legends and many phone games), but there's a fair argument that AAA games are also targeted at "casual players," by evidence of their wide popularity in terms of massive sales numbers.
AAA game industry agrees with you, releasing mega titles like Halo w/o a story to finish, just online "service game" that will always be there for you (until they shut the service off).