Profit-wise
Possibly.
2007 is when Bungie broke off of Microsoft.
So if 2000 is when it got dumber cause Microsoft acquired…figured the inverse would be true.
I have to kind of disagree, it’s more or less around the PS1 generation when a majority of the games hit 3D, things and so on, got shifted about for the worse and better from this transition of 2D to 3D while the devs are trying to work things out.
Games like Megaman for instance got a lot less harder because of this transition. Or Castlevania even with it’s 3D Games.
Fun fact, The Sims 2 used to have microtransactions, but it’s store is a separate thing from the game. 
…This is on Offtopic. 