Not so long ago, gamers around the world were excited to see the new machines from Sony and Microsoft. Questions like which would be better, how games will look, systems specs and etc were very common. However, once the games got out, gamers were not so impressed about the graphics. They wanted something more, not sure what, but there's 'something' missing.

That's easy to understand. Most gamers experienced the transition from 3rd generation to nowadays. The games evolved absurdly fast. The differences from NES to SNES and Master System to Mega Drive were amazing. Graphically, almost all games were kids style, so you can imagine the buzz when Mortal Kombat got out. The photographic and realistic style was beyond imagination.

How could they look better than that? PlayStation answered with the popularization of 3D. The short-time mascot Polygon Man showed that 3D polygons were the next big thing, and they were right. Final Fantasy VII, the first 3D game of the franchise, was one of the bestselling games around. Nintendo continued the ‘Nintendo way’ of funny graphics at the same time they innovated the gameplay with games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64.

If you followed me until now, you know that these games elevated the gamers taste to a unique experience in terms of graphics and gameplay. We become spoiled-children that wouldn't accept anything less than amazing. And despite the gameplay being the main factor of a game experience, on the surface we can only see how the games looks. So we’re not exactly experts about our feelings.

In parallel to consoles and handhelds lives a guy who is now referenced as (ugh) “The Master Race”, the PC. PCs are amazing. With STEAM you can play so many games at a very cheap price. We can say that STEAM is for gamers what bags and shoes are for women: we can’t have enough even though we won’t use all of them. Plus, on PC you have the freedom to build a machine according to your needs: a low spec if you’re short on budget or a many-times-more-powerful than a current console.

Most PC Gamers say that consoles are holding back the evolution of videogames. Many games already look better on PC and even though the initial cost of PC is very high for most, the games are cheaper, then you save money in the long term. Now let's ignore the fact that consoles already fulfilled the most of people’s needs (their hardware is not bad at all), it’s not fading away, but increasing globally, and has exclusive games not found on PC and focus about what would happen if games were really so impressive like everybody wanted.

During an interview, Shuhei Yoshida, Sony’s CEO said “We’ve been saying that the number of AAAs might be getting smaller because the cost of development for AAAs is getting higher” and that’s a sad true story. The first Mortal Kombat was created with only four people but more recent games, like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, needed the effort of 900 people. PSone games took roughly $800,000 to develop, this average raised to a $10 million budget on PS3/X360 generation, with reports that games like GTA V needed a $265 million budget.

There’s too much money at stake to afford mistakes. Companies break because they don’t earn enough to stay on the market. If we only accept AAA graphics to an amazing level, you can expect less diversity of AAA titles because of the effort that’s needed – basically, only well-known franchises would stay on the market – and the extinction of “mid tiers” like Onechanbara and Persona series just because they are not visually appealing to the marketing anymore.

With such high visual standards, who knows if even F2P games would survive? F2P are mostly like consoles: they need that the majority of people can run their requirements. Higher requirements need very good machines that are expensive. So you could expect fewer players too.

And that’s not so hard to imagine:  indies are the only option where low budget is possible and they are hated mostly because of the looks than anything else. Yes, there are a lot of bad indie games too, but is easy to see people hating them even though they didn’t even tried.

When you look at this point of view consoles are not holding PCs back but making them a favor. If things evolve at the speed of the PC, with nothing holding them back, there’s no guarantee that PC games wouldn't be like the mobile marketing where every year there’s a new hardware and after you noticed you’re already obsolete. But with consoles existence, you can already choose configurations. If all you want is the games to look better, you already can.

And despite the 1080p/60fps controversy, console games are beautiful and will improve. I know this looking back at how Heavenly Sword was, and how the optimization advanced on God of War 3. And If games like Ryse or inFamous Second Son are very good looking, imagine the future!
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sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

Can someone connect the thread title to the op? Is it that amazing graphics costs money?

kinda. Amazing graphics, cost money which leads to lesser diversification in game design.

I'M INCLINED TO AGREE WITH THE TITLE OF THIS THREAD AND THE OP.

Bad side being less risks? I'm ok with a balance

Yeah, but my brothers PC from 2005 can play stuff like Titanfall. The thing is it has terrible graphics so he doesn't play it much.

Visual fidelity ≠ budget

The best looking games are usually not the most expensive ones. The death of mid tier games isn't because of visuals but the market moving to fewer and fewer bigger titles. Now this is bigger in production values but also far more importantly marketing. Activision spends 100m+ on marketing every year on CoD, the games have never been the best looking games around but they are usually the biggest sellers of the year. You have to realize most people buy 1-3 games a year. When the marketing concentrates on a handful of titles that drives most people towards a few games, which in tern means the word of mouth in the mass market will be concentrated on fewer games. Just look at the Wii the graphics were crap but Nintendo spent a crazy amount on marketing especially for stuff like Mario Kart, New Super Mario Bros and Wii Sports which were some of the best selling games last gen. Activision didn't spend $500 million on Destiny to make the graphics the best around but to market the shit out of it, and that is why it has a good chance to be the best selling game of the year. And it's more effective to concentrate marketing on a few titles than to dilute the message pushing too many games which means that publisher focus on fewer bigger titles.

And the market is moving to fewer and fewer big titles because of the rise in development costs which is related to graphical fidelity in part at least.

This is true, except some of the highest selling games are quite a few steps down from the better looking titles (Call of Duty, Elder Scrolls come to mind). Though, I personally think the bigger problem is that the entire game industry has become a bloated mess and it's not because of better graphics.