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FWIW, not all pixel art is equal (and that's okay!). For some, pixel art is a means to an end—cheaper/easier to produce, focus on other aspects of game quality or time to release. For others it's very much a labor of love with plenty of time and effort dedicated to quality art.

Quality pixelart is more expensive than 3D assets. You get all angles and bone based animation from a model while you have to draw every animation frame in every angle manually with 2D approach. On top of that a 3D world brings easier customisation and reusability of assets.

OTOH with 3D you have to do a lot of work setting up bones, textures, blend shapes, and whatnot.

Is quality pixel art more expensive than quality 3D assets? I really don't think so.

Poor quality 3D assets still work OK. Poor quality pixel art is very ugly. So if you can only afford poor quality, 3D is much better.

shallow theory:

- 3d art is technically harder (more layers to master to get to a result). Pixel art operations are indeed trivial and accessible without learning.

- good visual / animated / gaming art is hard no matter 1d, 2d or 3d. It's more an art than a technique.

1d gaming art is almost certainly the hardest