Honestly, I don't like realism... I like complete fantasy. The improving graphics seems to prompt companies to get closer and closer to real life appearances in people and backgrounds. Personally I prefer cartoonish or just creative characters in most of my games.
As far as graphics the last time those sold me on a game or system was during the first year of the SNES so it's been a while. Sure since I've said such things as "Wow that looks nice" or "ohh I like that!" as often in games on the PS3 as I have for games on the Wii...
Note: Yes I have an HDTV and the best cables for these items to compare, it doesn't excite me to see realism in my games, I play them to escape realism..
Edit: To me, graphics improving used to serve a function to provide depth of field to a game and to provide realistic movement and the ability to discern things in the foreground and background. This gen really hasn't seen a marked improvement in that over the last gen(even comparing PS2 to PS3) so it doesn't serve that function to me anymore, now it's just eye candy which is fine and well but again I refer you to my argument against realism.
