Tears of the Kingdom has sold over 20 million copies in a year at full price $70, no bullshit inflated sales either by dropping the price six months in like some of these other phony "blockbusters" ride on, Breath of the Wild has been available for 7 years ... 99.9% of games wish they had Tears of the Kingdom sales. 

I don't care what your tech preferences are or what systems you own, it's irrelevant to discussions about the broad market. I only bring this up again because for whatever reason there's the same couple of posters that feel like they must insert that into market discussion, it's just completely non-sensical. I own, I like, etc. etc. here let me give you the memo again -- I don't give a crap what you like or what you own or what you prefer, I don't see what it adds in industry-related discussion.

There aren't that many "next-gen graphics showcase!" titles that are actually selling that well, most of the best selling games are old games like Fortnite, GTAV, COD, Zelda, Minecraft, Madden NFL, Elden Ring, Mario Kart, or you have a few licensed games with huge IP like Harry Potter and Spider-Man etc. the games that are trying to showcase graphics as a big selling feature aren't lighting up the sales charts, it's fair to ask what is happening in the marketplace.

Those graphical "underwhelming games" you speak of all have a few factors in common; they were either poorly written, buggy or exclusive to an unpopular store/one console, while ignoring the rest.

Cyberpunk was one such game that smashed the scene and sold very well and wasn't a total snoozefest/flop, and I'm amazed you're ignoring Conina point which he was trying to drive home, and instead you picked the worst bunch to make your argument stand on a single leg.

NO ONE HERE IS TALKING ABOUT ENTHUSIATS Soundwave, that's you talking ultra specifically about that small percentage, no one actually cares, please notice this and actually adhere to it.

Conina even showed general sales data on multiple accounts of PC sales as a whole (not focusing only on the 1% like you are doing), and that data will absolutely include folks with low to mid tier and even high end rigs, but the rig type shouldn't even matter, nor factor into this thread.

yes Genshin impact is extremely popular, have you been living under a rock?. The waifu games are basically the new and current hotness, hence why others are chasing Genshin around, before that it was Extraction shooters and before that, Fortnite and BR. On the PC side it's now Factory based tower defence games taking off, and none of them are being made for RTX 4090's, but again, that shouldn't be a focal factor in this thread.

People don't care for generic trash games written by out of touch boomers and execs who want to squeeze every last drop of money from customer's wallets, that's why some of them fail, and I'm amazed you aren't keeping up with why some of them are received so badly.

Cyberpunk had underwhelming sales relative to expectations initially and they've heavily discounted it to pump up the numbers in the years since launch and also invested another $145 million into the game (lol, which a luxury most developers don't get) after the initial release didn't go as planned, but that's a game that runs on a PS4 too. 

Look at the most popular games on the market ... COD is still a last gen game, Madden NFL has fairly mediocre graphics (relative to the technology available today), GTAV is a PS3-era game, Zelda: TOTK is a sequel to a Wii U game on the same engine, Mario Kart is a Wii U game, Minecraft is well ... lol, Fortnite can run on phones and the Switch that's the biggest IP of the last 10 years, Witcher 3 is an example you brought up that's a 9 year old last gen game, Genshin Impact is a huge new IP which is a smartphone game. Etc. etc. 

I'm sorry but it's hilarious that on a *sales forum* no one actually wants to talk about this even though these trend lines are massively different from any kind of generation before, instead you get discussion about individual tech fetishes ... not a whole lot of industry/sales insight on this forum at all.

Alan Wake II had GOTY wins, has been pushed by Nvidia in marketing for their GPUs, it has plenty of great press ... it shouldn't be struggling to just break even eight months after release. People should be buying that to show off their fancy new GPUs and consoles, but the fact is it's not breaking through with the broader mass market. The industry IMO is changing. 

No one's saying Senua's Saga has to sell even 5 million copies, but goodness ... LOWER than HiFi Rush sales ranking on the Steam store? That's a fucking disaster for a hyped Unreal Engine 5 hardware showcase. MS paid $120 million for this studio, probably north of $80 mill for the game, what an absolute dud on an investment.  

To be fair, the early adopters of the GTX 1650 will also have a model which aged badly:

Games are taking much longer to make that's all. you do realize that most sony games couldn't even break 10 million in the ps3 era even though they were graphical power houses. crysis 2 and 3 the most impressive games graphically could not even break even and the best selling games were on wii lol. you wanna talk about industry changing and you ignore the facts that graphics were never the massive selling point you are trying to paint, it's a combination of everything. GTA6, witcher 4, sony big games will all be graphical power houses moving forward and they will do great. 60fps gameplay is not  a graphical fetishes that you are making it out to be when the whole industry has hardware that can play 90% of games at 60fps. ALL of sony games on ps5 are graphical show cases at 60fps but you ignore their sales for some reason.  you seem to think cause switch was such a huge success that no one care about graphics and performance anymore but nintendo has always had great success with there handhelds, just look at what PC brings it's gonna over take all combined soon in terms of game sales. 

The problem is on your end.  For starters you parrot the same crap over and over in every single thread.  

Secondly you have this all or nothing mentality which is childish.  McDonald's sells more hamburgers than Michelin restaurants.  In your world that means everyone is going McDonald's and Michelin is dying.  Obviously that isn't the case.  

Gaming is diverse, that isn't going to change.  I don't get why you insist in pushing your silly agenda in every thread, especially one that is baseless.  GTA6 is in development.  Witcher 4 is in development.  Big games are not going anywhere.

Plus your understanding of tech is God awful.  You still view performance as ram and never consider bus, bandwidth, etc.

Everyone should be happy, given the market is big enough to accommodate everyone.  The market isn't doing some magical transformation with graphics dying and all games will be focused on phone owners.

Edit

The short version is you seem unaware that within a category there are sub markets and various demographics.  This singularity concept of yours is just plain old stupid.  This isn't how economics function.  The easiest and simplest example I can give you is Nintendo.  Nintendo isn't dropping Zelda because "OMG teH candY CrusH sAles!!!".  

Not once did I claim that Tears of the Kingdom wasn't a success.
But it sold less than Breath of the Wild.

If the underlying technology is what makes a game successful or not, then using your false prior logic it should have out-sold Breath of the Wild.

Except it's very relevant as you keep mentioning other platforms, don't try shifting the goal post because you have empirically lost this debate on every level.

There are tons of next-gen graphics showcases that are selling well.

Another user already mentioned them, so I won't bother repeating them to undermine your constant lies and logical fallacies.

But doing what Trump does and repeating the same lies over and over, isn't going to magically turn them true.

The funny part is cod is a huge upgrade compared to the ps4 version almost every one that loves cod would upgrade to a ps5 or pc and Soundwave would call it a fetish  like o gamers that have money no way would they care about graphics and perfomance cause switch sold great lol. Mean while 200 million users using ps5 level hardware and the whole industry is continuing to make impressive looking games.

https://youtu.be/1RKXSfGMqtk?si=ZIcMBbqGDhMV22ia

While I'd have to check the exact sales, Tears sold over 20 million in about 10 months. Breath of the Wild is at 31 million+ 1.7 million Wii U copies in seven+ years.

...'not doing as well' is very, very, very relative.

Actually do name all of these graphics driven showcase titles that are made specifically for PS5/XBSX only or RTX 20+ series cards only that are selling huge numbers that aren't,

1.) Made by Sony and generally with a Marvel license attached to it. We know Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart broke even but from Sony's internal leaks it looks like it barely made a profit, they have pushed back a 4th game and cut the budget from what Rift Apart had, for it which indicates the game didn't make big money. Sony's own games obviously get a ton of marketing attention and bundles which a regular publisher is not going to be able to match. 

2.) Or have a unicorn license attached to them like Harry Potter. Most developers cannot afford to simply slap Spider-Man or Harry Potter or Star Wars onto their games and there's only a handful of IP like that even available to begin with. 

If we look at the games that fit into that criteria

Alan Wake II - Graphics showcase. Has won GOTY awards, has Nvidia marketing behind it, still has not broke even. 

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora - Graphics showcase. Huge IP, had a marketing co-deal with Playstation. Charted one time at I believe no.6 on Circana and then dropped off the face of the earth. Further to that we find this:

Meanwhile, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, which released last month, has seen 1.9 million players thus far, according to Henderson, accruing around $133 million in revenue, which is quite a step down from what developer Massive Entertainment’s previous releases managed in their early days, with The Division bringing in $330 million and The Division 2 bringing in $264 million.

So even with one of the biggest movie IPs ever attached they had underwhelming performance compared to something like ... The Division (lol).

Final Fantasy 16 + Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth - Two fairly large budget next-gen games with a big name brand and FF7 itself is hugely iconic. Sales results are very disappointing here. 

Forspoken - Another big "next-gen" graphics blockbuster that Square-Enix was banking on, this one is a full on flop with a budget north of $100 million too. 

Starfield - One of the most expensive and hyped games ever made, nice graphics sure, but no where near the success of other Bethesda games, despite being their best looking game ever made by a good margin. $400 million dollar budget. Has done nothing to drive XBox hardware. 

Immortals Of Aveum - Big budget Unreal Engine 5 showcase title that's all about pushing graphics fidelity with a huge publisher (EA) behind it ... flopped. Half the dev team was laid off after release due to poor sales and just a few months ago another big chunk of the staff that was left was placed into furlough (basically an unpaid leave). Wonderful. 

Senua's Saga: HB2 - Another Unreal 5 Engine title, Microsoft paid $120 million for this studio no doubt hoping for a visual showcase that would drive XBox sales. Instead this is a total flop, Steam numbers below HiFi Rush which sold so badly it got that studio axed altogether. Lets hope Microsoft is generous and won't pull the plug on this studio so fast for the sake of the people who work there and need that paycheque. 

Gotham Knights - Very pretty game, next-gen only, not too far off from Spider-Man 2 in graphics to be honest. Huge IP (Batman) too. Has not sold huge numbers. 

I'm sure there will be graphics heavy games in the future that do sell well, but there are enough examples here to show that the modern industry is changing also and graphics are not the driving force for sales or even a reliable way to make money in the game business anymore. And it's not even like all of these games had poor reviews, the only one that really had outright terrible reviews would be Forspoken and it's not like games with poor reviews have never sold well, there are plenty of examples of games selling well without 9/10 reviews. So that can't be used as an excuse here, if people want next-gen graphics so bad, they sure as fuck aren't buying of the next-gen only games that really try to push the technology. 

I'm sure for instance Deadpool & Wolverine will do great in the future too, that doesn't mean there aren't serious problems with Hollywood movie budgets and the overemphasis on empty special effects that aren't impressing a lot of movie goers any longer. People acknowledge clearly several big budget Hollywood movies of late have bombed or underperformed, you would think on a sales website for gaming there could be some nuanced discussion beyond just "I likey graphix and needs my RAM! Gimme moar!!!!", but I guess not. 

The gaming equivalent to something like Boxofficetheory this website/forum is most certainly not.