Of course the technical / graphical aspect of a game are good for the wow! factor. Nobody can't dismiss the fact that playing a current gen game in 1920x1080 on a 40" is less enjoyable than playing Pong on a monochrome TV back in the 70s.

FYI, my first game ever was Bolo on Atari ST.

But, I blame this generation for praising over the graphical capabilities of games for the solely sake of it. IMHO, Crysis, Bioshock are just another FPS, average games on their own (I played these). But they are very nice to watch. They don't really bring something new, besides on the technical POV. I'd rather play Doom or Duke Nukem 3D for the latter reasons

That reminds me a friend of mine whose hobby is cinema. He told me that he couldn't watch black and white movies because 'it looked too old'. Such a shame for him, he'll never see black and white masterpieces of Hitchcock and so on...

OP: Not simply for the sake of good graphics no, it means nothing unto itself. It needs meaning, like the first time I saw Oblivion or Half-Life 2; advanced physics, interactive environments like no other and gorgeous looks all combined into one neat package, now that's a treat!

Funny; many would call the graphics of a game like Breakout appalling, or even almost non-existant. It's a series of squares and rectangles. But it's still a damn fun game to me; rounding off the ball on a newer system isn't going to make it a better game. What makes it better is stuff like improved physics. Make me a Breakout game with a damn near perfect physics engine, and I'll think it's a blast, whether it looks shiny or just like the Atari version.

Yes, they are VIDEO games, as you said. But nowhere does said "video" suddenly have to be this ultra-graphical thing. What 'video' is, is a series of moving pictures. The picture could be as simple as a square bouncing around, but a video it remains. So no, I don't need pretty graphics, and no, I'm not kidding myself. What I care about is the underlying game. Sure, Halo 3 looks a hell of a lot better than Pac Man. But I don't care for FPS games, so despite the better graphics of Halo, I'm going to pick the "worse" game, and play Pac Man. Why would I do that, if graphics mattered so much? Part of it is preferences, and part of it is that I just don't care about graphics.

graphics are maybe one of the least important aspects of a game for me, maybe its because I play as many older games as new ones, I appreciate an NES game just as well as a 360 game.

Graphics are great! However it takes a back seat to gameplay and Multiplayer.

I don't really care about graphix, but at least they should be decent and up to date....

i'd rather have a good STYLE of graphics rather than realistic graphics.
but gameplay is always above . since i'd pretty much enjoy any game in any generation if it had good gameplay.

Good graphics will come and go, whereas good gameplay stays for a long time.

Of course you could love a woman for her personality and cause she's fun to be with even though she's not attractive.  But it sure helps if she is!

really good graphics never made a bad game good
good games have gotten less good by graphical problems/bad graphics