To Split or not to Split: Splitting one website into multiple

I have a website that's been around for over 13 years built on Wordpress. Let's say it's about video games (it's not but it will serve as an analogy.) It's a news and reviews website - not a store or business. Revenue is all from ads. DA 61, for reference on age/size/popularity.

tl;dr: Is it OK to split an old website into multiple new ones (splitting off a new niche from the old general site), copy over the posts related to the new niche, and 301 redirect the old posts to the new ones on the new sites?

Traffic has been dropping steadily over the past few years, and we're trying to figure out what's going on.

This started off as a general enthusiast blog talking about "video games" as an enthusiast interested in a certain type of game. Over time it started getting diffused - we started talking about other types of games, even more boring ones, still focused on the consumer.

Then we started talking about how to develop video games, then about the future of video games (like VR for example) or the technology behind developing games or how to sell them, etc.

So I think the site has become too diffused and is unable to keep up with the big, well-funded websites in the industry.

What we're wanting to do is split this website into three or four to focus better on what each user wants. Here's my current plan based on our analogy:

1. Website 1 (the original site): Go back to writing about video games from an enthusiast and consumer perspective, allowing for more flexibility (not only enthusiast-focused).
2. Website 2 (new): Writing about the future of video games from a consumer perspective (VR, AR, etc.)
3. Website 3 (new): Writing about the future of video games from an industry perspective (tech specifics, development, marketing, etc.)
4. Website 4 (new): Writing about the traditional and future industry as a whole, which would also be a source of organic traffic to drive people the business' services - let's call it web development for the indie video game industry.

So my question is:

1. Should we create these three new websites and all new content, letting the old content sit on the old site (keeping in mind our limited resources), or
2. Copy over the relevant content from Website 1 to each new site and 301 the old posts to the new ones on the new websites?

I feel like ultimately this is going to be a better user experience, help us understand our audiences better, and be clearer for search engines to decide what the sites are actually about, but I'm worried about the SEO impact involved here.

Thank you for your help!

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