The best way to explain it imo is if you look at the normal rating system for a game review. Graphics are a single section of the review along with sound, story, gameplay, replayability, etc.. And yet a disproportionately large amount of time, money, and effort goes into the graphics of most games released today. Developers would be served well to allot more time on those other areas, and I can think of no greater example of how true that is than Left 4 Dead.
Left 4 Dead is not at the cutting edge of graphics, but it looks decent. What it does have is some great sound along with an awesome context driven automated character speech system so that if you're cursor goes over a zombie when you're group isn't in battle it makes your character cry out "Incoming zombies!" or "Hunter!" (depending on the type of zombie) etc...combined with the AI director to increase replayability to whole new levels and a gameplay ideology built around "cooperate or die" rather than "cooperate..if you want to".
I'm not saying that L4D makes up for its lack of graphics with these other strengths but rather that other games attempt to make up for their lack of diverse strengths by having fantastic graphics instead. In short, I think the way L4D was prioritised is the right way to make games, and thats not to say that you can't have great graphics, I just don't think great graphics shouldn't be at the expense of everything else.
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