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I've seen a few comments of late around the forum on the quality (and lack thereof) of fluff in 40k.
These are entirely my own opinions but of the codices and suppliments I have read in the last 6 months or so I found:

Harlequins - probably average, had a few nice ideas in it (Cegorachs grand plan), descriptions and ethos of the different troupes and some nice character/unit descriptions. But nothing special.
Shield of Baal suppliment - pretty poor. I thought book 1 in the Cryptus system had a few nice battle ideas and descriptions but book 2 was fairly woeful. Leaving the aside the alliance which I didnt have a huge problem with, the arrival of the Necrons and their motivations was just a wtf for me.
Blood Angels - I thought it was pretty solid, nothing amazingly new but it had decent info on the black rage and red thirst.
Necrons - darn poor. Absolutely nothing new, totally rehashed (and shortened) overall.
Daemonkin - probably average, didnt have anything hugely new in it and was OTT in a lot of places but ala Halies did have a few nice character/unit descriptions.
IG/AM - mostly a rehash of older fluff with nothing really new in it. Again new units got some ok descriptions but not as indepth as past codicies.
GKs - pretty poor - shortened and rehashed and not as interesting for me.
Eldar - was ok.
Tau - I quite enjoyed the Tau book - I thought it had some nice new stuff in it with the history of their expansions and sub factions and new units etc.
Orks - very disappointed - had none of the charm, wackiness or "fun" of the older codicies. Made the Orks a big boring imo.
Wolves - was ok but nothing new really.
Dark Angels - I quite enjoyed the DA book for some reason.

The overall trend that Im picking out is that codicies that have had a redo of late (Crons, BAs, IG) are mostly just rehashes of old stuff - almost liked GW expected one to have read the 5/6th edition codicies. I have to say if I was a newbie reading the Cron book, I'd be actually pretty confused as to what was going on!
The new codices then (Harlies, DK) have some nice bits to them but are no way as indepth or interesting as older edition fluff (2nd ed Nids, 4th ed IG etc).

Have GW moved away from providing really new, interesting and indepth fluff and just gone down the rules, formation, detachments and pictures route? I feel so Im afraid.

Pretty much.
The upside is they are putting out new material a lot faster now. Clearly they are embracing new media, all of their recent codexrs have been designed so they work on tablets for example.

They do lack the personality of older releases , which is a shame.

codex Grey Knights actually had a decent amount of new Info IMHO, nothing spectacular and no major new revelations but some enw stuff. at the same time the newest 'dex, Skitarii, I found to be kinda dissappointing. they could have given us another 10 pages of pure fluff and I'd have been happy.

Pasrt of me wonders if this is GW moving codices from a "sourcebook" format. to a "rules book" format.

There hasn't been any good new fluff since the Codex Supplements. Those books are ripoffs, but the fluff is usually good.

I sometimes wonder to myself if the fluff has gotten worse or perhaps my expectations of literature have matured through the years.

There are times I feel that 40k fluff has lost a lot of the nuance in the lore, which really is what translates the grim, dark nature of the universe and sometimes served to reflect back on our own world. I think back to a small piece in the 3rd edition rulebook I believe that was about a man interviewing a (SoB) Mother Superior- he noticed that her pin was shaped in an excruciating manner that caused the flesh to slowly tear from her finger as she wrote. The man was held aback by such a terrible device, so the Mother explained the important symbolism the pen had.

I don't think there is as much of that anymore. It seems much of the grim nature comes down to "look how many millions died in this pyrrhic victory!" (seriously, pyrrhic is GW's favorite word to use in describing absolutely everything). It makes me think of Stalin's famous quote "One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic."

I feel that what may be missing so often is the feeling of this horrible universe.

DA fluff was awesome and actually keeps getting better with each release in the last codex they were basically confirmed to be legion strength and the lion is awake. New novel coming out is going to expand cypher as well

The new dark eldar codex had some cool fluff in it. It just lost points for giving the axe to a few characters (thus removing much of their fluff).

I really liked what was there in the harlie book. I just wanted more. I haven't read much new fluff aside from that in a while. ^_^;

I actually enjoyed that the Khorne Daemonkin went into full detail for each and every worshipper and unit of khorne rather then the rather meh version where they have to shoehorn in such about the other gods.

Yeah, the newer books are rather sparse, and as noted, very much rely on the reader to already be familiar with the topics to get the whole picture, and mostly are sparse rehashes of 5E stuff.

Most of my favorite 40k fluff comes from earlier editions, often those I never played. The 2008-ish onward stuff, really 5E and later, has felt increasingly dumbed down and one dimensional.

I have to be extremely bored to read the fluff in the codex. After being in the hobby for 15 years, I get it. Tyranids devour worlds, eldar are dying, 1 space marine could single handedly exterminate all of the Tyranids and eldar if he really wanted to, etc. I'm more in it for the game. The problem is that's gone downhill faster than the fluff

In some ways I can see why the fluff may be simplified.

I prefer richer fluff though just because I can cope with inaccuracies and don't take it literally. This game does need to remain accessible to younger people though and to be fair, it does feel like the attention span is getting shorter for each successive generation.

I was. . . disappointed by the new ork codex. They took most of the interesting facts about the ork life cycle and either glossed over it or gave them as a vague outline. They also removed a lot of the characters and stories that had made the orks the "comedy" faction of 40K.

With the orks lacking a collection of novels like the IG and SM have, I worry how long before my favourite boyz become non-canon.

From a Tyranid perspective the last 12 months were very good.

The Codex itself was bland, leaving out a lot of stuff in the previous edition (seems to be the trend for them all), but it did add in a trio of handy timelines and the really cool Shadowbrink Tyranids vs Daemons battle that for the first time really illustrates how those forces oppose one another on a grand scale.

Then we had the Rising Leviathan dataslate trio, which was a lovely self-contained sci-fi story that fits into the grander setting very snugly, and came with a great look at the Tyranid invasion strategies from start to end.

There was also the Valedor apocalypse warzone (and very good supporting novel) which managed to portray Tyranids in a novel as cunning, dangerous antagonists rather than simply as Bolter fodder.

Then we got Shield of Baal: Leviathan and Exterminatus and those really ramped up the threat level of Hive Fleet Leviathan, showcased the adaptive tactics the Hive Fleets are known for and has given a couple more factions an "its personal" relationship with the Tyranids (something rpeviously only the Ultramarines and Iyanden Eldar really claim in a grand scale).

For me, 2014 took the somewhhat stagnant Tyranid fluff (with its issue of "they always either lose or get a stalemate") and turned it around in a big way with some really impressive victories and even the defeats are meaningless to the greater whole as Leviathan rampages on unchecked.

What would I like to see in the future?

An Octarian War campaign and Genestealer Cults examined in greater depth

The Storm Claw stuff for Orks (Red Waaagh, HOfW) wasn't bad.

Orks just need to win, thats all. It sucks being pitted against a good guy who's codex is just coming out and have to win.