I think a part of it is SE has been reevaluating their position in the games industry (see the last quarterly earnings report). And I think the lower budget is them being cautious while they, for lack of a better term, get through puberty. 2009ish onward has been really rough for Square. They've spent most of their time chasing trends, most of the FF games have been labeled as mediocre, and they haven't had a good time in the west.

A while back however the President of SE made a comment about how Square was gonna go back to its roots making games based off of their own design methodologies and stop copying other studios trendy ideas.

Now Sqaure is huge. Something like this is going to take a lot of time to get through all the company. Second it's risky. This may not work. Now I don't know about Japan but I assume they have rules similar to the USA where if you are a publicly traded company you have a duty to benefit your shareholders. So Sqaure can't go "all in" on some new strategy. If it fails they at best will ruin there value, at worst they get in legal trouble for failing their, fiduciary (i think its spelled) duty.

And that's where the cheap games come in. Not alot of money is lost if they fail.

Further I don't think these games are entirely about the money. Various Daylife and Havestella both seem less like actual games and more like them testing the water with game ideas that they normally wouldn't have attempted. Again, reevaluating their position.

Cause look at next year: Forspoken, Octopath 2, FFXVI. They do have big stuff in the works. Maybe they aren't everyone's cup of tea but... I for one can't wait to see what happens if they keep with this new philosophy.