Hey, I have a pinhole camera I made as a boy and it still takes beautiful p ictures.
I wouldn't agree that DSLRS plateaued 8-9 years ago. The pixel war may be l ong dead but there are still improvements being made to the chips. Low ligh t ability has come on in leaps and bounds. Colour rendition is improved. Camera size has reduced. The Sony 7 series offer full frame capabilities in a remarkably small body and the Fuji and Olympus small sensor cameras are excellent devices. Panasonic introduced the LX100 at Photokina and to the o ld style photographer it would definitely be a must have with its controls similar to the older rangefinders.
There is no arguing that older digital cameras can still take photos but th ere certainly have been improvements in camera design over the last 9-10 ye ars.