Everything I see these days is sprawling shonen epics and "moe".
This is it in a nutshell.
It's possible that there's still good stuff being made, but I can't find any (in fairness, I've gotten tired of trying to find anything in the last 2-3 years, but that's not THAT long). Good plot or character-driven stories, I've had no luck finding, but every now and then I'll still find a balls-out funny series. That Mah Jongg series was good for a laugh. But even those are harder to find.
While good things may still be out there, I think it's a little bit of "they are less frequently made and harder to find" and a little bit of "I'm too lazy to look as hard as I used to".
Not-really-related anecdote: Some of the importers I used to get stuff from were themselves wondering where the rather un-anime stuff like Wings of Honnaemise or Tokyo Godfathers went. Stuff that depended on careful and well-done characterization, rather than most of the usual anime conventions. It was kind of bleakly funny, because those were the only guys I met who ever cared about that kind of anime besides me.