I think a ton of it has to wtih asthetics.
back in the genesis NES era, the graphics where absolutely terrible, and the devs had to work with 8 bit music and single d pad/2-4 button controllers. Because of this they had to do something to keep people playing the game. This thing ended up being crazy difficulty and/or extreme length (supplemented by the fact that 95% of games back then didnt have any method of saving. Imagine sonic 4 or sonic colours and you had to beat the entire game in one sit down because you couldnt save. that alone would add tons of difficulty and length to the game.
But nowadays the devs dont have to make the game exceedingly hard (unless they want to) because they can get people to remember the amazing looks and sounds of the game. Especially since replayability is a huge factor for us as gamers but its essentially meaningless from a business perspective for the people who make the game, because if they can get the graphics to make you buy the game then whatever happens afterwards isnt too much of their concern other than getting you to buy possible sequels.
not a great thing for us as gamers but yea, thats how it is.
I don't think it was the aesthetics more than the arcade quality/arcade value of games.
Games are becoming less arcade-like and more movie-like. Even if you couldn't finish games, each stage had the potential to be fun. Even if it was repetitive, here come the bad guys, gotta get rid of them, or something like that. You were trying to get the high score, for example.
The audience didn't give a **** about your main character's story or anything like that (and honestly, it's only certain otaku-type people, 'hard core gamers', who do now). With arcades, you didn't want to hold the player just standing there doing nothing, because otherwise you risk making them lose interest in the game. Back then, when games were games,
everyone played - women played pacman, women played tetris, etc.
Fast forward to now when you have wannabe movie directors making games, and you have less of the arcade-y hook and more of the "i need to make this easy enough for people to see my glorious cutscene". And you also get long, corridor games like FF13.
Part of the reason why I think FPS and multiplayer games are so popular is because they can be pretty arcade-like - you can actually 'lose' and such. It's weird, because people treat games like it's such an artform that it can become inaccessible and dry.
:3