People who dismiss indie games because they are indie, are exactly the people driving the industry in the direction it is. Obviously not all indie games are great, but neither are all the $60 AAA games you gobble up at the drop of a hat. And yes, we've seen enough posts to know that you gobble damn near all of them up.
Just because your friends play the newest copy of CoD doesn't make it a good game, and if those are the only games they play, they aren't the "gamer" segment, and thus the reason people who actually try different games are always blasting that crowd.
The budget argument is an interesting one though because there is some truth to it, to a degree. There seems to be a shift in mentality to think that it takes $100million to make a quality game. It isn't true. 50% of that is generally marketing. That's right, marketing is telling you it's the must have game, not that is IS a good game. That being said, if a company actually smartly utilized that budget into the actual game, you could make mind blowing games almost every time. Instead, it's "throw as much money at it as we can, rush it out and make everyone think they need this game". This mentality exists because there is practically no such thing as a refund. Once they have your money, they have your money. The need to have a quality game stops at the Dev level. Everyone above that is only worried about the bottom line and timeline.
The inverse is the indie/smaller dev market. They take years sometimes, have a much lower budget, and make it work for them. The difference here is sometimes simply, their idea may not have been that good to begin with, not necessarily the budget involved. If budget was the issue, who's to say that if it was up to a publisher if it would ever be made, or changed/marketed so drastically different that it was, that it would flop anyway?
(not pointed at anyone specifically - but if you took offense, it's probably you).