| Kakadu18 said: I believe graphics are the least important part of a game. A game can look cool, beautiful, stylish etc. even with so called generations old graphics. |
This is subjective to each person though. You will learn that when you get older and work with more different types of people. Some people need visuals to absorb the information better, some prefer a meatie 10 page report. Graphics are no different as some people experience and learn via images so they will take the game in more. Me personally I can't really tell the difference between smooth 30fps and 60fps as I have grown up on inferior frame rates so my ability to adopt is seemliness in my head.
Made some valid points about graphics perhaps not conveyed in the best way possible.
Granted gameplay will always be king, but developers do use it as a selling point especially for new franchises or franchise they are chasing full retail price on to try and win over the hardcore gamer who will then hopefully play it on their gaming channel and others will watch it and want to be like their idle.
Games that were mentioned like, Minecraft, well that started life as a free game. If it cost money (ie RRP) from day 1 it probably wouldn't have gotten as big. That relied on people trying out something that looked bad to find out it was awesome fun to play and spread the word via social media.
Games like FIFA, COD, GTA, do not need to have the best graphics because they have a competitive advantage (i.e. established franchises, lack of solid competition), but saying that they aren't slouches either. At one point in time GTA used to set bars, so did COD when it was still in a battle against battlefield and FIFIA, well it has no competition as it's the only licensed football game.
So in the end it all comes down to who you are targeting and what competition you have will determine how much effort goes into graphics.
If you look at console software tie ratios:
https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Software_tie_ratio
You can kind of see that those averages are probably well below most people on this site. So what does this tell you? Hardcore gamers are far and few between and there is a significant portion of people who would buy 1-3 games tops in order those those average to be well below what most people would own on this site per console.
Just look at the top 50 PS4 game totals on this site as an example as it's large than current gen. Most not all those game I would argue are leaders in graphics in their genres at the time of release or have no competition where they need to push boundaries i.e. FIFA.
Switch well that is just a Nintendo game fest other then a few bleeps. It is the only choice to play Nintendo games so if you want to play their games you really got no choice or say in the graphics. One could make an argument that these games are pushing the limits of the hardware so they are the best they can be on Switch. 3rd parties had a chance to get a few in the top sales, but when you release game codes, or carts with half a game that requires a download, they won't sell so well.
It would be interesting to see how these games would sell if hey had a more graphically powerful one on say PS5.
