I agree it's healthier, by comparison, but I see the downward spiral that affects AAA devs currently looming for indie devs. The same pressure urging talented individuals to leave the big studios and "make indie teams" is what often causes them to split off and form yet a different indie team -- or join a competitor -- when that first indie team gets bigger and gets sold off. Again, hardly unique to gaming. We see this alot in the tech field, and it's incredibly common in other spheres of mass entertainment. Unfortunate, but completely expected.
the only remedy is very talented, strong willed leaders who can keep large-enough teams together to make AAA games with the vision and creativity that people more often find in "indies". Easier said than done of course.
No Man's Sky today is not the game at launch (not complaining, as I platinum'd the vanilla version and liked it just fine). The product it offers to the customer looking for "space shooty games" is immense because it survived for enough years for the content to pile up. Terraria and Minecraft are the same way. The problem is that a truly "revolutionary" indie space shooter has to compete with the amount of content. It's kinda like the World of Warcraft subscriber problem. This is worse in the AAA sphere, and plenty of indies are still "breaking through" like Everspace making enough $$ for a sequel, despite the existence of Elite Dangerous, NMS, Star Citizen, etc. But as the space grows more crowded and the "classics" continue gaining more and more content, it becomes impossible to
This is something that worries me for the next iteration of any videogames, not just indies. Like... who cares what gimmick Nintendo adds to Mario Kart 9 if it doesn't have just as many tracks and racers? For many games, the overwhelming amount of content and playability makes it too attractive to waste much time on other games in the genre. And this is happening just as graphics begin to become "good enough", as people seem satisfied with cheap 3d gaming on their smartphone if the tiddies and RPG hamster wheels are shiny enough. The content crunch is the predicament of the gaming industry, graphics and production value have become a self-destructive industry obsession.