It also seems possible that, at least to some extent, the overall quality of games has gone up with the volume, so people have become more critical. I don't play enough games to know. What's the gamer consensus?
Case in point is the recently re-released Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. When it was released 20-something years ago, it received great reviews. I also loved the game. The re-release was basically the same game with modernized graphics - with the same bugs and all - and received much worse reviews. I watched a few Youtube videos playing it and thought "geez, how did I not see how crappy this game was 20 years ago".
The reason for this is that the same concept - an open world role-playing game with a massive world - has been redone in many other games and each new iteration of the concept has improved on it. As a result, the bar is now a lot higher for open world RPG games; if I play such a game nowadays, I expect to see good story design, good writing, good voice acting, etc. in addition to just being able to roam around in vast virtual forests.