Even as a young kid I noticed that split. The NES included some posters and flyers listing all the original line up of games, with the same visual design (even cartridges stickers) and they were all simple arcade-like games. It already felt vintage even though this wasn't my generation, and rapidly the feel of games changed radically, it also merged with the current culture, with tv shows and movies of the 80s.
Jeremy Parish’s YouTube channel does a fantastic job of documenting this on the NES and other consoles.
If Atari has been able to survive significantly longer I’m sure they would have learned too.