Dunno what made me think of this just now. When I worked for IT in a school district way back in the 90s, a librarian told me she kept a supply of mouse balls in her desk because kids would steal them out of the school computers. What I remember about those balls was they picked up dust and crud off surfaces. Pretty soon optical mice came along and they were history.
A few years ago my mouse died on me and I had to dig in my tech box for a usable spare… Found a ball mouse and used it a total of five seconds before I tossed it (and the rest of them I had) and went out and bought a cheap optical instead lol
It’s like so many things. We were okay with what we had until something came along to vastly improve it. Internet and computer speeds, storage sizes, graphics. We did seem to forget how having good gameplay is important though in some modern games, got distracted by the eye candy.