Then why do retro games do so well?  It may be the driving force for developers, but it's not been the main force for consumers.

Hahaha, Oh wow.

Absolutely! That's why the PS3 and 360 are outselling the Wii by SOOO MUCH! Screw gameplay, give me GRAPHICS!! Games aren't supposed to be fun, they're supposed to look good! In fact, they should make a game that you don't even play, it just plays real-time, really really good-looking graphics for 10 hours! That would be the PERFECT GAME! I would play it over and over again. I might even invite my friends over to watch the really good graphics multiplayer! Or we could all watch really good graphics ONLINE and chat about them!

And I guess the millions of people downloading the old mario games don't even know what crysis is, much less know how to watch videos of it. Man, your logic, as always, is BULLETPROOF!

hahahaha.

/sarcasm

Ok, seriously... I agree with the fact that graphics are not as important as some make them out to be. Just look at the history of gaming, the graphically inferior machine has won pretty much every match up (Super Nintendo beat Sega, PS1 beat N64, PS2 beat Xbox & GC, DS is crushing PSP, and now the Wii is outselling everybody). The typical console consumer is more concerned with the fun factor and price than just dazzling graphics. That's not to say that graphics don't matter at all, because they do to some extent, they are just not the primary selling point of a console. If you disagree with that last statement than you haven't looked at sales numbers for any generation, let alone this one.

If I want to spend $600 for good graphics, I'll buy a new geforce card for my PC. The new graphics cards far outperform any next-gen console on the market, and can run at resolution beyond 1080P. I own a Wii for the gaming factor and can't freakin wait for SM Galaxy (which has amazing graphics, btw, but I'll get it mostly bc it's of gameplay). I may buy a 360 when the price drops significantly because it has some really good games on it, and the graphics are nice, but not the REASON I'll buy one.

As it's been said before, the point of this post is not that graphics don't matter, but they're not as important as some would have us believe. MS and Sony just relied on graphics too much and didn't innovate in any other way gameplay-wise. They thought everyone would be willing to spend $400 - $600 just because the graphics are great, they were wrong.

 You never cease to surprise me.  How anyone can possibly have this particular line of thought is beyond me.

This is total BS. Have you ever played Gears? Gears of War is the first real third person shooter because RE 4 doesn't count as a shooter.

Show me one game that plays like Gears of War. 

I thought graphics were "good enough" when Super Mario Sunshine came out.

Seriously.

Everyone? You're exaggerating their opinions and making a straw man argument, which can be seen as a flame bait.   

Some people carefully craft their arguments and post their opinions as to why they think graphics may not be the most critical factor in our gaming experience and then others come with one-liners like "graphics matters. the end of story. if not, go back to NES" without a shred of logic or argument.  Interwebs is such a wonderful place. 

 That's called blue-ray movie. People don't buy PS3's for the games you know, just the graphics.

Ya know, sometimes I wonder if you are a Wii fan in disguise.  That you say obviously outrageous comments on purpose, to point out how ridiculous the line of thought is behind such a comment.