Reading RPS preview of Rage i stumble on a line about the graphics:
"There’s no denying it’s a visual show-stopper, but that alone doesn’t carry the clout it used to."
Do you think that is true? That stunning visuals are not as big thing as they were just few years ago?
For years we saw graphic importance growing higher and higher. It begun with Quake 1, then we had Unreal 1, which was so praised for its stunning graphics, and after that we had a role-coaster of games trying to push graphics to the max. That resulted in Crysis. Game too beautiful for any even the best hardware to handle (took two years for hardware to actually run the game maxed at playable rate.)
Nowadays the difference between a AAA title from 2010 and 2008 is negligible.
Do you believe we actually reached the point where game designers will stop trying to push the edge of graphics quality and instead of concentrating on more important things?

Absolutely true. The cost of creating art assets is a much more pressing limit on what you can display in a game now than the mere hardware limits have been in the past.

So? Shiny graphics do not a good game make. Yeah, it's nice to have it but if the game is awesome who cares if it's ugly as hell?
What we're seeing is that consoles have pretty much hit the limit as to how much you can push the system without suffering in any way, and seeing as most games these days are simultaneously developed/ported to PC/consoles maybe it's just part of a cycle. Or I just made that shit up.

This might be the incorrect inference to make, actually. It could very well be that graphics are becoming either much more expensive or much more difficult to really improve substantially these days.
In the past, a new chip could come out that could handle rendering at twice the resolution, or double the poly count or something. There were way more graphical limiters that could be cut away, and game art was much more representational or stylized. As graphics have gotten closer and closer to realism, it's becoming much harder to make huge changes. We account for almost everything now--lighting on the nth detail, resolution and polygons really aren't problems anymore... we can't just throw in a new effect or level of detail. It's all there, it can only be improved a bit at a time now.
Well, that's a guess anyway.

Oh ok, I thought you were saying that graphical development was slowing down because the devs weren't concentrating on it anymore.
I am a huge, huge fan of stylized graphics. TF2 made me ruin my pants when I first saw it, and I likewise have a giant hardon for love the MMO. And I have played the hell out of the Void with cheats, because although I am fucked at playing that game, it is so incredibly beautiful.
Check out the Guild Wars 2 trailers. I like the art a lot. Subtle but "painterly" as one of the devs said.

The industry will probably implode because they'll be forced to focus on gameplay and plot -- something most large developers haven't done for years. I definitely prefer stylized graphics because they generally have a longer life than 'realistic' graphics -- however even games with stylized graphics can fall short in the gameplay department a la Borderlands. Great looking game with a lot of unfulfilled potential.

Nope. As what captfitz said, the amount of resources plunged into making graphics that are on par with the level of Crysis are immense. Given a short development time span, depending on the priorities of the developer, if he/they choose to focus on graphics first, there will likely be a large gap in terms of focus from gameplay to graphics - unless, of course, people buy the license from one another, but with more in-house engines surfacing over the last few years, I highly doubt this will be the case. At best, people will probably re-use past engines the way Bethesda re-uses Gamebryo.
I'm not hopeful. I'm still pessimistic in that I've yet to see the trend where, generally in the industry, gameplay takes precedence over graphics - as in, innovative gameplay in the way that doesn't feel like a rehash repackaged with different models and skins and AI.

you wouldn't see a trend cause we just approached the situation where one cannot market game anymore based on the graphics.
it will take few years.

Conversely, one cannot market a game to the mainstream, where graphics is compromised either.

I still enjoy games I was playing back in the 80s. Though I have always been impressed by good graphics, I have never seen them as a requirement for a good game.
I also think people have inappropriately equated "good graphics" with "realistic graphics". I find games with a uniqe and individual look to be much more graphically memorable than anything that looks real. I will always remember games like Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, or Killer 7 for their unique visual style while I will quickly forget anything I've seen from any random realistic military shooter game.

not sure what you are getting at....
what i am saying that since you cannot make graphic so much better than in previous games you cannot market it like that. you have to concentrate on other things to make your game stand out from the crowd.
stylized graphics
better world, AI, more stuff, physics...

Looks like I misread your post. Yes you are right on that note.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DAPXMZk2iw

It's pretty obvious that we'll see a shift away from purely graphics-focused games as the current generation of hardware starts to reach it's limits with respect to what it can do. The chokepoint here is obviously the console hardware found on the 360 and PS3.
Adding to that is the relative success indie developers have had with releases that are anything but graphic heavy in the past years. The advent of cheap, effortless digital distribution means these can also make money from their games now.
The gaming industry is growing like a wildfire and might even surpass the music industry in total global revenue soon. Everybody wants a piece of the cake, and the competition between developers and publishers have probably never been higher.
I think it will be a very good few years for gamers, until the next generation of consoles arrive.

The graphics market has always been about a drive towards realism, now that we basically HAVE it, it can't really be a selling point. It'd be kind of like saying "The new Ford Generic: Now with FOUR wheels!"
They can still market with graphics, they just have to change it to art direction or cinematography.
I'd love to think that games development will begin to focus on the gameplay but just because there's a plateau in graphics doesn't mean they're any easier and cheaper to make. I doubt we'll get anything in the way of major change until something that makes graphics development significantly easier and/or cheaper happens.
I'm thinking scene scanning technology so they could build sets physically and scan them to create textured meshes automatically .That way you'd get scene artists & model builders stolen from the film industry to create the landscapes and free up programmers to work on gameplay enhancements
Heh the RIAA are gonna LOVE that