It was for me as well, like, I was happy to be able to play Morrowind at ~15 fps at the time. But we can do better now; at the time, hardware was a limiting factor, but now if a game runs like shit, it's always the developer's fault.

Recent example, Cities Skylines 2; onereason it runs like shit is that the pedestrians still get fully rendered teeth even though you're far away and can't see them. Why do they even have teeth? It's a city building sim.

Or the latest Pokemon game, it looks like it could've been made 20 years ago in terms of visuals, but it runs terribly.