I'm pretty sure Capcom said more remakes are coming, so I'm guessing a number of copies sold at full price.  

You are still making this an all or nothing discussion. 

Graphics aren't everything but they do matter.  If they didn't remakes would not be selling millions.

Edit

If your point is Cyberpunk shouldn't be the standard, fair enough, I agree. 

I never said that group in particular is the majority but them combined with those who don't care as much but are still more likely to purchase a game when it has high quality visuals make up a big chunk. Hogwarts Legacy was the best selling game last year after all and it definitely wouldn't have been as huge a seller if its recreation of Hogwarts wasn't high fidelity. The issue for the sequel is if it's not a notable leap over the 1st it won't be as exciting but making it a notable leap will be costly.  

If it doesn't they'll have a harder time selling it to people. At least UE5 should help alleviate this problem for a lot of developers at least somewhat.

Most remakes don't sell that great. Where's the buzz on the Dead Space remake? 

The first four Resident Evil games are among the most beloved games of their previous generations, that's why they are selling as a primary factor ... the nostalgia. If Capcom remade Dino Crisis with graphics as good or even better than RE4 Remake, does anyone really think it would even sell 1/3 the copies? It wouldn't. 

If graphics were the driving factor for a majority of gamers, games like Alan Wake 2 should be debuting no.1 on the Circana charts and being among the top selling games of the year. It didn't even chart in the top 20. 

Instead what are kids playing ... shit like Roblox and Fornite and Minecraft, lol. 

The thing with graphics is they don't really impress younger kids anymore I think. That's just a standard and they don't really think of it as anything special, kind of like no one today really runs up to you and says "wow the special effects in this movie were amazing! You should see it!" ... because everyone is used to CGI in movies that it's not anything special any longer. But like 20+ years ago, it was still novel when a movie had incredible effects. Same thing is happening with game graphics, the upgrades have become boring and rote and predictable, the number of people who really care is less and less and this will compound and get even worse as we move forward. 

Even look at the context of what we're talking about right now, RE4 Remake ... a PS4 game ... a PS4 is 11 years old now. The PS4 is as old today as the Super NES was when the Playstation 2 launched, lol. Imagine when the PS2 launched if you were holding up an SNES game as an example of a graphics showcase game. 

It doesn't mean graphics and hardware power are irrelevant, but it is definitely less and less of factor to gamers and becoming more and more of an issue to developers because of the skyrocketing costs. 

Would it really though? Honestly at this point I think FF is just a brand that maybe can sell 5 million ... maybe. That's what's left of its fanbase. No one outside of that gives a shit. 

Square is just going to have to accept the bitter pill that they're no longer part of the "cool kids club", meaning they're not really going to be in the big budget top end graphics showcase space any longer, you need more than $50 in your pocket to play at the high roller's table. They don't have the sales to compete against games that are going to soon have budgets of $300-$400 million. 

Capcom didn't do a big graphical leap for Monster Hunter Wilds and MH World sold way better than FF15, 16, 7Remake, 7Rebirth, etc. etc. So if they're not willing to even spend big, cold hard reality is likely to be sinking in at Square-Enix at this point too. 

Lets just do some basic math here, lets even give Square-Enix some benefit of the doubt and say on 300 million dollar budget for an "Awesome Graphics FF17", they see an uptick in sales from FF16 to like 7 million copies. Not bad. On that 7 million lets say they make a net profit (after licensing fees, shipping/printing costs for physical, etc.) average of about $40/copy. I say $40 because some copies will be sold at full price, some significantly below full price, lets just assume an average of $40 (which is being very generous). 

That still only gets you to $280 million in net profit ... so against a $300 million budget, you haven't even broken even. And I'm not even including things like marketing costs which may add another $20-$50 mill to your budget. 

Even 300 million is kind not like the greatest budget either for a graphics showcase, lol, Sony spent $300 million on Spider-Man 2 and Insomniac's own leaked internal memos state that people at the company wonder if gamers will even notice a big difference in graphics. Spider-Man 3 (the next game) is already pre-budgeted for 385 million, that means it likely will end up over 400 million. You really probably need 400+ million to leave FF16/7 Rebirth tier graphics in the dust completely and have it be an acceptable FF experience (that means 40-60 hour playtime with dozens of environments/characters/etc. etc.). 300 mill isn't gonna cut it. 

This is one of those truths that actually hurts to hear....

And yes, its not even close, Lego games look a million times better, and probably play better as well (I've never played roblox, and dont intend every to either).

Fun story: A few weeks ago I was on vacation at one of those beach all-inclusive resorts and they had a pretty upscale daycare/kids area, so I was dropping off my kiddo. The kids area was pretty stocked, they had like a bunch of TVs, one is showing the Mario movie, but they even had a PS5 and XBox Series X. 

The overwhelming majority of the kids were gathered around the XBox to my surprise playing Roblox, while like one kid was playing Spider-Man on the PS5, lol. 

These kids are definitely a different generation, lol. It's another reason I think developers who are still operating like the industry is 20 years in the past and chasing the graphics dragon could very easily get themselves into big trouble. These kids raised on smartphones and thinking no budget Tiktok videos are high entertainment don't give two fucks about graphics in a lot of cases. You're going to end up making games for 40 year olds trying to relive their 20s and spending absurd budgets if you're chasing nothing but graphics. 

A lot of creepers on Roblox. My daughter, when she was younger, wanted to play it. We downloaded and monitored, she got some inappropriate messages super quick. I deleted the crap out of it.

The amount of false correlations you draw is funny.  

Dead Space Remake sold a few million.

Alan Wake 2 sales are low.....  and it isn't available on Steam.  Sales would be much higher if not for blocking the largest base of consumers in gaming.

Games have scalable engines, it isn't 1995 anymore, your comparisons are based on an antiquated understanding of tech.

Look at it this way.  Why release a switch 2 if graphics don't matter?  Hmm...  maybe Nintendo is looking to release new and more powerful hardware because graphics play a part in consumer acceptance.

Edit

Personally I think the ps4 was sony's best system in design.  Super powerful and well priced.  Sony made some big mistakes with the ps5, just my opinion, that is holding it back.  It should have been a standard ssd storage and more put into the gpu.  

They do, and this is exactly why Epic has been preying on that demographic via Fortnite and their Lego partnership. Epic knows it's harder to grab us older folks, because of the way we grew up with gaming, but the kids of today grew up with something as basic as Roblox, and they still love it, and that's what they want, and we cannot slight them for that, because we ourselves grew up with games kids these says consider "ugly".

I shit you not, I saw a teen making fun of Lara croft's triangle breasts, while at the same time, pointing out similar "assets" with Minecraft modded skins, and this is what I mean when kids of today see what we grew up with as ugly. 

We'll still be getting games that try for a realistic kind of vibe/look, but a lot of games these days are opting for charming art styles and ones that tend to fit with mobile app design. I am still glad though that we have some indie devs that try to provide for us older folks with games like Valheim and it's PS1 looking visuals, or D.O.R.F RTS, that's got that C&C 1 style look to it's visuals. 

Alan Wake 2 is on the graphics oriented PS5, XBox Series X is it not? Do these people not want a graphics showcase that actually pushes the system? Guess not. You should be able to crack at least the top 20 with PS5/XBox Series X alone easy if graphics are such a big draw. It's not even like it's just a graphics whore showcase, it got great reviews too, GOTY nominations, etc. etc. Still can't even chart in the top 20. 

Nintendo is releasing Switch 2 to focus around a graphics upgrade not even probably because they want to but because they want to force people to buy in again to another (what they hope is) 150m systems and without a Wiimote or DS type input miracle, they have to rely on basically better hardware. Some people don't even care for that, but they get forced into having to upgrade otherwise you're locked out of new installments of IP you enjoy. Simple as that. 

These hardware totals are not growing either, it's the same group and same numbers of people just buying over and over again, any gain in audience looks like its being offset by equal numbers of people who quit/grow out of game consoles. 120-130 million-ish Playstation users, 120-150 million Nintendo owners, maybe 40 million and sinking XBox. Which wouldn't be a big deal if the budgets of the games weren't going up 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x, 7x, etc. etc. etc. You need the userbase to rise equivalently and it's not happening. Shawn Layden former head of Playstation just flat out stated this is a big problem and he would know better than anyone on this board. 

If the market worked the way you think it should the sales of hardware would go like this

1.) High end PC GPUs like a 4090 for max graphics powah!

2.) XBox Series X (most powerful console)

3.) Playstation 5

4.) A distant, irrelevant 4th ... Nintendo Switch

When the reality is actually inverted completely, lol. Games like Alan Wake 2 and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora should be dominating the sales charts, when they're less relevant to gamers than Roblox is, a game so ugly it that makes the Wii U LEGO game look like a master class in visuals. 

Graphics have their place, but it isn't actually the majority driver of the market and the economics of chasing graphics is becoming more and more unrealistic. To get a serious generational leap beyond PS4 games like Miles Morales and Horizon Forbidden West I don't think even $300 million is gonna get you close. Spider-Man 2 does not look a generation better than Miles Morales. You need to go in to $400-$500 million range on the minimum spend I think, GTA6 is what? A billion for the main game? Are you getting even 50% extra customers for the 300% additional budget you've spent? Nope. Insomniac's own leaked memos bemoan this fact, they're aware of it and not happy about it.