I completely agree with your point. I'm more pessimistic about AAA in general, though. AAA always tries to maximize superficials, minimize the hard stuff, and pay more money for marketing than for development. It's the same in games, novels, music and movies. And your grandma could have said the same about the AAA products of her time (music, theatre), right? It's not a surprise.

There are lots of great games below AAA and even some AAA titles have good content by surprise (for example the interactive movie "The Last of Us" was great in my eyes, not as a game but as a movie, which you can enjoy for free on Youtube).