It's like all drug addicts already settled for their favorite drug and aren't interested in anything new.
Interesting comparison, and one that I think is a lot more relative to the gaming industry than people would like to believe.
In the early 1980s retail games lived as long as the platform they were released on. This didn't mean much as most platforms didn't live for many years, but one notable example of this was the Infocom catalog on home computers. Infocom lived by the creed that a title released to store shelves was a title that should stay on the store shelves. This meant that Infocom titles sold well, but they sold
slow. It usually took a year or two for an Infocom title to reach its peak of success, sales-wise. It also meant that for those stores that stocked them, the entire catalog more or less was always available. (Obviously Infocom also dealt in low volumes.)
This changed when Activision bought up Infocom in 1986. Activision had by that point been around for seven years, so they knew what worked best for the gaming market: Fresh releases rapidly replacing the old classics. It worked well for Activision (and everyone else who followed suit) but it didn't work for Infocom, and Infocom folded in 1989.
If we apply the drug analogy to this, then Infocom is the laid back "old-timer" drug dealer who keeps selling the same old regular stuff to his regular customers, who probably treat him as they treat the cornershop merchant or the baker or somesuch. Someone reliable that they depend on, someone who's not involved in turf wars with other gangs and such. Activision is the ambitious suit-wearing drug dealer who's only looking to sell the high-end drugs in bulk by today's end, and are generally more concerned with their own wallets than being a part of some community.
As far as gaming goes, the ambitious drug dealers ruled the roost for almost 20 years. New titles quickly came in to replace the old ones. That wasn't much of a problem because, as said before, the platforms for the games didn't last that long either. But the PC market stretches back over 35 years now, and both Sony and Microsoft can reach back 20 years for legacy titles for their systems, and Nintendo can do even better than that. And this larger back catalog is creating an interesting effect.
Because computer games were sold in retail stores and new stock replaced old stock, there was always a healthy supply/demand ratio. But with digital distributors the supply is left unchecked, the amount of shelf space is infinite and titles rarely (if ever) leave those shelves. This inevitably creates a massive market imbalance as supply grows out of control, while demand doesn't. This means that gamers inevitably stop getting excited for new games, as they have so many old ones that they can just keep playing.
(This is one of the reasons why most game releases are sequels BTW. Why sell the classic Burger #1 for $3.99, when you can sell the NEW Burger #2 (with only some added lettuce) for $9.99? Repeat ad nauseum.)
If we take the supply-going-out-of-control thing and apply it to the drug market, you have a nightmare scenario: People content with getting high on the old, low-price shit (because the new shit quickly kills off most of its customers) and not showing any interest in whatever new drugs might be coming. That's no way to run a business, reputable or not.
Overall I think this is a facet of the gaming industry people either didn't anticipate, or anticipated and quietly got on the boat early to profit from the situation while the going was good. Either way, here we are.