In the 90s I didn't have to give Rare $5 to play as oddjob, and another $5 to make heads big, and another $5 to fight slaps only, and another $5 to.....
That's the difference. Those games were $70 because the ROM chips nintendo forced you to use were basically unavailable at sufficient quantities. Playstation games were cheaper despite being able to use literally 10x the amount of assets.
The only people forcing AAA studios to add a billion polygons to every stick are themselves. They haven't tried anything different, so of course they think it's the only option. Meanwhile billions of dollars a year go to people who spent $10 on an asset in the unity store to back up a game that actually is interesting.
Actually, even worse, they often AREN'T wasting millions on assets. Grand Turismo 7 has plenty of cars that are just copy/pasted from the previous release.
