I believe that games are being more simplistic and easier than games of older generation consoles. I don't think it's a bad thing, but I wish that something like rpgs would still have that hardcore concept to it.
I think its partly because graphics were not as good in the past as they are now and a lot of development time is focused on that aspect of a game.
But in general mechanics wise games are fairly simple now and not very complex
Plus they have to appeal to the lowest common denominator, not everyone wants a complicated game. And games developers want to sell their games to as many people as possible
I think in the past to give games a proper length, the difficulty was increased, nowadays with the current technology, games can be much more varied and dont need difficulty and replayability to make it worth it
I definitely think they are easier but disagree with simplistic, mechanics have gotten substantially more complex as we shifted from 2d to 3d to being able to mess with time or gravity a la prince of persia, meaningfully interact with the world (battlefield, minecraft etc.) Or requiring collaboration with other players like in raids in destiny or MMOs. Old games are definitely harder but i think a good bit is due to simple controls and limited abilities
I think older games did more with less resources, as computer technology was less advanced then. Older games also had much more complex and detailed stories. Modern games look a lot prettier and have a lot more options, but it gets boring with all the point and click and score tons of points attitude.
Older games are harder, in my opinion. They were more straight forward so you either died or you didn't. Plus arcades needed to make money somehow. We could also go into how kids have no perseverance but that's a whole other topic.
The older games were much harder. But I can understand why the games are easier nowadays. The developers want to target more people. A lot of people might quit a game, because of frustration when it is too hard. So the make these games easier to fit for these people as well.