This is true though it is a big issue for AAA game makers since many consumers expect the graphics of those to keep improving at a good pace and if progress there suddenly significantly slows many people will feel disappointed. Like if FF17 barely looks any better than FF16 then that would negatively impact its sales. A company like Square is in a really tough position with this since their big games are expected to have high production values and they're not huge sellers but if they pull back on that sales will decline.

The pace of graphical progress is kinda unavoidably slowing down anyway though due to a combination of diminishing returns and the rising costs of pushing the cutting edge. FF7 Rebirth doesn't look massively better than its predecessor on PS4 despite being ostensibly a generation above.

We're gonna have to get used to graphical improvement slowing down whether we like it or not.

It'll happen eventually yeah though currently the question some companies are facing is if they should keep increasing costs to satisfy expectations but have insane budgets or pull back on that but experience a decline in sales. It'll get a lot better when it gets to the point when it becomes not that expensive to have photorealistic graphics but my guess is that's 10-20 years or so away.

I mean, we're at the point now where you can have a game not look cutting edge or best in class but still look "good enough" for the mass market to be satisfied. The crowd who demand the absolute latest and greatest visuals aren't the majority; if they were the Switch wouldn't be so successful and games like Minecraft and Fortnite wouldn't be so massive.

I'll let you in on a secret. 

Final Fantasy 17 isn't going to look much better than 16. 

Lets look at the facts. The series is declining in sales and it's likely already very expensive just to have FF16 tier graphics in a large scale RPG context with big cinematic cutscenes. 

So to go beyond FF16 graphics, you'd likely need a budget that is getting into $250-$300 million, but you're only selling like what? I don't even think FF16 has hit 5 million copies sold yet, if it had Square-Enix would've released some kind of press indicating it did. 

The math simply doesn't math on $150-$250 million dollar budgets for a game franchise that is only putting up 5-6 million in sales. 

Increasing your budget while your sales are going down is obviously not workable. 

Another example of this is Monster Hunter Wilds ... it doesn't really look much better than Monster Hunter World on the PS4. I suspect actually when you're looking at Wilds, you're looking at one of the first big ticket Switch 2 third party games. They simply stand to sell so many copies of this on Switch 2 that there's no way they could look off it. 

I don't know why you're insisting that Final Fantasy is declining. The series's average is notably higher than 5-6 million. You can get your point across without exaggerations lol. FF16 will probably be a sales disappointment and only sell in the 5-6 milllion range (if it doesn't release on Xbox and Switch 2), but that's because it's an outlier. It's too action heavy and RPG light.

Rebirth came out less than 4 years after Remake, and less than 3 years after Intergrade despite COVID hindering development. I wonder how much it cost to make, but I doubt it's higher than $150 million.

Horizon Zero Dawn is a superb example of fluff. Metal flowers, cups, 100 audio recordings, silly hunter club and way too many boring side quests.

First stop in reducing development costs should be cut the fluff.

The "fluff" doesn't cost anything to make. You're not going to save much money from a "find the cat" side quest that just uses the existing engine assets and probably doesn't even involve the main design staff but is handed out to the B/C part of the development team. 

Visual fidelity costs money and the people who create that (the artists) deserve to be paid for the time and talent they bring to the table in making those assets. And that price right now is $200+ million, and will soon be $300 million, and then $400 million if you want to keep going up. People won't work for free and talented artists deserve to be compensated for the work they bring. There is no "cost cutting" for that unless you want to scale back graphics. 

Period. 

Frankly the game studios should kiss these people's asses, because these games should cost *more* to make, these people are underpaid and quite often put in massive overtime and extra hours that they are not compensated for properly. 

Dumb.  So adding in side missions, cups, audio logs - all of which include voice acting is free?  

Lol, no.  

It's not the majority of the budget, cutting some dumb side quests is not magically going to turn a $200 million dollar game into a $120 million dollar game. There's a reason it's called filler content ... because it's just reusing already created game engine assets and filling it with a bunch of mundane shit the main designers don't even likely bother spending their time with.