It's hard comparing GaaS to Single player ganes. It's not less effort, it's different effort.
Your average gacha may look lower effort, but it has to sustain thst effort longer instead of patching the game for a few months and moving on. It has to do a lot more marketing to get players in, because many are this pseudo-MMO experience, completely with PvP and Guild content to manage.
At the highest end, Hoyovervese's operating costs would even make Activision blush. But those games make billions to compensate.
Well in the same vein, we can directly compare the decline of fully fledged MMORPGs to the psuedo-mmos that are Gacha games with essentially all the ambitious parts of the mmo that is stripped off.
That very much is an indictment of ambition and progress here.
Your average gacha may look lower effort, but it has to sustain thst effort longer instead of patching the game for a few months and moving on. It has to do a lot more marketing to get players in, because many are this pseudo-MMO experience, completely with PvP and Guild content to manage.
At the highest end, Hoyovervese's operating costs would even make Activision blush. But those games make billions to compensate.