He did some sound design on Tomb Raider III and composed for The Last Revelation, Chronicles and Angel of Darkness. He wasn’t involved with any of the games people actually care about.
They were always conservative. A few years before these ads Nintendo participated in Senate hearings where they advocated for censoring the entire medium. They just had a “fellow kids” period in the early 2000s. Luckily, judging by the sales of the GameCube, most people weren’t fooled.
Games continue to get cheaper to make as middleware improves and advancing hardware lessens the need for optimisation. If companies choose to spend more on games despite this then that’s their problem.