I agree, especially with your last sentence.

Waw, I kinda expected stiff resistance to my post but it seems we all agree, that's gotta be a first!

 Oh why thank you.  I like the last sentence as well.  Cause it shows how 2 games can have entirely different amazing qualites yet still be both amazing in the same respect.  

But yea both PS360 and Wii are both seeing a lot of thigns that could be better if devs put more time in it and your topic just gave me the ability to express my opinions on that.

And yep glad to see all of us agree.  We are all gamers at heart.

I agree that with the current fixation on graphics/realism (outside of Wii) is potentially short sighted and may blow up in the industry's face. Why?

As graphics and physics and AI suck up $$$$ we are seeing a lot of gorgeous but very short games (Heavenly Sword, COD4, Drake's Fortune, Halo 3, etc). There are some exceptions like Mass Effect (which is I think 30 hours but that's actually still short by RPG standards) and I think Bioshock had a decent gameplay time plus lots of replayability. Some of these make up for short single game play with heavy multiplayer focus (Halo 3, COD4) but it's getting to be all the same. Seriously, how many variations of death match can people play?

I believe players will eventually get sick of paying premium dollars for 6-12 hour games and either rent, or buy used (and sell back) or wait until they drop in price, making it progressively harder for developers to recoop costs as this generation and trend continues.

Replayability is one way to compensation for short gameplay. Obviously Halo 3's multiplayer is addictive, and games like Wii Sports, Guitar Hero and SSBB can suck up many, many hours with very simple but addictive mechanics. However, none of these, including Halo 3, really need HD graphics to be at all successful. Seriously, if the xbox was still around and not the 360, Halo 3 still would have sold like hotcakes, laced with cocaine. There was very little added to the game by the 360's superior power.

LittleBigPlanet looks promising, but again, do the HD graphics really matter one whit in this game? No. It looks like fun, and that's what counts.

It's not that devs put to much money on graphics, it's just that they do not put enough money on the other part (hiring a real scenarist would do some good sometimes).

It is just the first year of this generation. At the moment devs are just starting to get to grips with the systems and how to make them sing. Every generation developers have huge inital development costs because they have to learn to get a lot out of the systems fast. Buy the third and fourth generation games Devs can start making better looking, longer games for half of what they spent on the inital releases. Without a doubt the gameing community has got to have the worst combined memory of any on the planet. This same thing has been happening for 6 generations already and yet people stil don't get it.

So my awsner to the question is No. Developers and Publishers are doing exactally what they need to do at the moment. Dump a large amount of money into getting a good foundation for this generation. Insomniac has shown a great stratagy thus far, doing just that. After you have a great engine to build on every game after that will cost less, come together faster, and continue to look better as new tricks are slowly introduced to the programming community.

As far as graphics killing gameing once we hit photo realism, that is pure BS. Once we hit photorealism is when the games truly begin. Devs can then focus completly on content in the game, and that is the best thing that can happen. Polyphony Digital is a great example of this. They have hit near Photorealism on GT5 and now it is all about content. GT5 is going to change the way people think about games, as it will stretch beyond anything we have ever seen before. In conclusion to that no Photorealism is not the death of game, it is the birth.

Lastly I want to talk about this continuos evelution in control. Evelutionary controls can not be expected from every game that comes out. To expect that is unrealist and unprofessional. We only really need this to happen when we hit a point that the way we are used to playing is becoming outdated. By that I mean that the gameplay is behind the graphics, like in games such as The getaway and GTA. When the gameplay looks and feels stif while the enviornment you are in is alive and flowing then their is a problem. However when thins are perfect like Mario, Jak, Halo, GT then their is no need to change them. Take sports for example, people ahve been playing sports for 100's of years and we have not had to change the way they are played. So the point here is if somthing works nearly perfect their is no reason to inovate on it, because as long as their is a goal or compatition it will never get boring.

"Graphics" is a little vague, since it includes models, textures, lighting, and animation, among other things. On top of that the 360/PS3 also have advantages in processing power (more stuff going on at once, better draw distance, etc.), audio, physics, and AI.

It's in no way an insignificant difference but right now it's not worth the extra cost to most consumers when compared to a cheap Wii which has games which still can look/play as good or better than before and offers a novel control experience.

Well if they're not spending too much on graphics and not enough on the rest how big does a game's budget have to get? 50, 100 million? I think budgets are already out of control as it is.

You want to know what's funny? When Nintendo finally brings out a HD console in 2012 (or 2020 or whenever) suddenly all these kinds of threads will disappear and HD will be "just fine" along with companies spending time on graphics.

 Maybe for some people but personally I would still be spending half my time playing old roguelikes on my PC (admitedly tile based, as far as graphics go ASCII irks me) along with a bunch of other abandonware.

I accept that devs need to spend more at the beginning of a gen but 20, 30, 50 million??? I'm thinking that that kind of money is unique to this generation and even accepting these budgets why not invest in something that actually impacts gameplay like AI that actually lives up to the hype or engines that do something significantly different than just making things look more presentable.

Why do we need to wait til graphics hit a plateau before concentrating on content? Why not make room for the good stuff now? To some extent I think that just improving visuals comes down to laziness and it depresses me to think that devs will only focus else where when they have no other choice. Also what the hell is going to be so revolutionary about GT5?

GT & Halo having perfect controls(I haven't played Jak)? GT, yes, if you use a steering wheel as it pretty much is the same as the real thing. Halo, well both the wiimote and m+k provide better FPS controls so I'd say there's plenty of room for improvement. Hell, Mario probably doesn't have perfect controls but I'll tell you what they're refreshing and you can't say that about too many games these days.