You mean like consoles?

Kinda, games ported to mobile also.

Porting to mobile comes with a dumbing down of the control scheme and thus dumbing down of game complexity since you can't control it.

And they turn into "free" with IAPs.

Rather not.

Sometimes I have the feeling AAAs can be better optimized than Unity based indies.

It's probably a bit better than when Unity was new. I do remember the first x-com remake in 2012 was lasting longer on battery than $random_unity_indie.