[RetroTechie]

In late 80s you'd still have a significant cost difference between 8 (or 16) bit CPUs and more powerful ones like the 68K. 10k or 100k transistors mattered a lot.

These days most smaller cores are integrated with peripherals, which can easily take the bulk of the silicon area (+cost). Then it's effectively free to tack on a small 32 bit core like Cortex-Mx (or even small 64b core). Why bother with 8/16 bit one?

I suspect RISC-V may eat a lot of that market in years ahead.

For components where CPU core is a good portion of the silicon (microcontrollers, RFID tags, toys, etc etc), that may be different. That's why many old 8/16 bit architectures are still around in one form or another.