[bluescrn]

That was a very different time. That era of pushing hardware to it's limits is mostly history when it comes to games.

These days, hardware is almost limitless* , the real scarce resource is person-hours of development time.

(*Ok, not limitless, there's still some people doing serious optimisation work on games. But for an average indie/mobile developer, it's more about avoiding fairly well known performance pitfalls than worrying about low-level optimisation or inventing really clever algorithms to gain back some speed)

[msla]

Maybe a single person can't make a Triple-A game engine. That's not a problem, because a single person can't make anything else needed for a Triple-A game, either.

Photorealistic art assets? Voice acting from name actors? Really crappy hackneyed plots which fall to pieces under the slightest scrutiny? I think Bethesda actually has a patent on that. Lootbox mechanics which are a couple iffy election cycles away from a Senate subcommittee hearing? None of that is coming out of a bedroom developer. Writing a simple engine for a simple indie game with the kinds of art and mechanics a single person or small unfunded team can accomplish, however, is a lot more feasible.