Whilst development tools have certainly taken a stride forward and definitely lowered the barrier to entry for indie developers, they also haven't made a major dent to the overall daunting process, at least when it comes to most western developers (UE4 has gained a strong foothold in Japan, but that's also largely because they were already so badly behind in iteration efficiency compared to even most companies working with proprietary sw). Better tools are not a new thing, and have been a constant target of iteration in the industry since early years (not to say that it's not something that we still need to work on, a lot), but they are not the silver bullet to enormous scope and complexity of games. A toolset doesn't make a 500-man production into a 100-man production.
Well we (as an industry) have iterated on project management and production for closer to 40 years, and still acknowledge that it's fucking tough, not to mention that there isn't even a clear correlation between "great agile management principles" and results, as outlined by the
Game Outcomes Project. Brick-and-mortar is not really the main source of costs and going virtual in game production has usually resulted in disasters when you add the scope of AAA games. Outsourcing is already a massive thing in the industry, and definitely helps keep costs down a bit and scaling productions better (as not to have to continue the hire-fire-hire cycle).
Unfortunately, that does not mean you even get the money to develop in first place, nor is it realistic for most businesses. I mean, where do you get at least 10-20 million by promising that you are not even expecting a decent profit, but carry a massive risk (which is inherent to most game productions).
Of course we do, all the time. But as with nearly everything related to game development, there is no silver bullet, not even a copper one. The AAA industry can't simply downscale back to last-era production values and quality. Consumers expect things to improve, not to go 5 years back in time.
