This would be the perfect time for a AAA Simulator game
Many of the major developers are very aware of simulators. One of the biggest ones to show love to the genre is Square Enix and you probably didn’t even know. In Power Wash Simulator there’s two free DLC packs for the game. One of them where you get hired by Lara Croft (of Tomb Raider fame) to wash her old mansion. Before you ask, yes, it IS the mansion where you could lock the butler in the freezer and yes, there absolutely IS a nod to that.
My personal favorite though is another free add-on where you get to work in the Final Fantasy 7 universe. Shinra hires you on to clean up some of their things. For example, someone stole a motorcycle and a three wheeled truck from their vehicle showcase and now that they’ve been returned, they desperately need to be cleaned off. You even get to clean off some of Shinra’s boss robots and a replica of the entire area, Mako reactors and all. Though, there is a bit of a side quest when some rando named Tifa hires you on to clean a strange bar of hers that has a lot of weird pulleys around a pinball table.
It’s amazing and really makes me wonder what would happen if one of these companies just went all in on a game.
One of the first ones that comes to mind is Bandai. Bandai could hire a game company to go all in on a game like Mech Mechanic Simulator except you’d work on Gundam. It could be a huge money making venture for them. Imagine if you got the game and it came with five Gundam series worth of pilots and mech suits and over time they could release other series as DLC packs. They could even go so far as to allow you to use the pieces from one on another. I’d live off that game.
A house flipper type game with an even more advanced engine that allows you to build wall corners at an angle other than 90 degrees would be something too. Capcom could be a good one. A mech mechanic like game where you need to work on the Robot Masters and other bots for Dr. Wily. A farm simulator like game where you have to harvest plants in the world of Monster Hunter, coming up with a system of backup in-case a Rathalos decides to burn some of your crops.
People all over are starting to give into the weird curiosity that is simulator games and finding out how much of a joy they can be. As I said earlier, these games give me little bits of serotonin, and also, they calm my autism like a damn lion tamer. They’re wonderful experiences and I’m genuinely hoping these bigger companies take note of the potential here.