It benifits a couple of genres like racing sims, sports, etc by making it feel more authentic. Aside from that, I don't see much of a point. I find games like Eternal Sonata and Ni No Kuni way more visually pleasing than games like Killzone. I play games to relax myself and escape reality which is why I rarely play sports and racers; then again, I find those games boring.

Graphics enhance gameplay.

ever seen that stupid movie gamer?/end thread.

After a nonsensical and unrelated sentence, calling someone dumb from one's opinion isn't the best thing you could do to put forward your argument. It just made you look as silly and unlikeable as the character in your avatar. Tune down the vitriol, or you likely will average less than 60 posts per ban during you stay here. Just a friendly advice...

Also, alternatively I could argue realism lost on the long run on other, more advanced media and art formats. On painting, realism is as passé as the 19th century; realistic movies lost market share to the unusual and the fantastic;  the old standards made way to an alternate ways of using voice and instrumental sounds; the abstract won architecture, and so on.

Perhaps photorealism is still popular on the folks accessing the latest 9GAG article about someone making portraits using a ballpoint pen, but aside from those and hardcore console games, I can't honestly think of anything making means and ends of it...

Or you might not have that and the gameplay may still suck. So what's your point?

Photorealism is not just about making it look mundane
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/40-mind-blowing-photorealistic-paintings/

My wife is very good at pencil drawings, one of the favorites is 4 generations of the family next to each other in the same picture. Creating a big picture of a small faded photograph is a great art style.

What games should stop doing is faking photo realism by simulating all the flaws in camera lenses. Cut it out with the depth of field, motion blur, lens flares, bloom, fake hdr. Sure some of these exist in our visual system too, but my eyes are a whole lot better then the cheap cameras games try to simulate.

Keep all the properties of light and shadow, yyet enhance the visual quality instead of degrade it.
Kinda ironic that while photography has been using HDR to create hyperrealistic looking photographs, games have been trying to emulate cheap digital camera with the opposite HDR effect.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/10/35-fantastic-hdr-pictures/

So many (photorealistic) art style choices for games, why make it look like a cheap documentary.

Game immersion is mostly if not all about gameplay.

Not really, graphics, music, storyline all have huge impacts when it comes to immersion.

The original Super Mario Bros. has awesome gameplay but it is totally unimmersive compared to Super Mario 3D World.

Back in 83? Everybody wanted to save a princess, music was top notch and catchy, graphics was one of the best.

I don't see the point in it. I play games to have fun and get away from realism