I TOTALLY agree! Twilight princess is way better than Gears or Resistance... Only graphics ho's disagree with me!

The gamplay of Tp is WAY better and Resistanace is just an ordinary fps with nice graphics... (Btw: This is an opinion... Everyone can disagree with me... And i don't think that's a problem... Just don't make this a problem by calling bad names and taking this as a flamebait... Cause it's not... Just givin my opinion).

So... instead of commenting on the crap going on in the thread, the usual bullshit that gets drummed up by people...

I'd say age does play a factor, but its not the primary one. Sure, growing up with systems more around PS1, N64, or DC power might make you feel that graphics are important to the overall gameplay moreso than people who grew up on Atari graphics.

There's a hundred other reasons why someone might think this way. Personal choice in gaming genres can affect things, RPGs and Racing/Sports games are usually a bit more driven by graphics. RPGs can use them to immerse you better in a story, racing games use them to make that racing experience feel more realistic (and give you something to look at as you drive around in laps.)

Geographical location. People who are spoiled by pretty things, such as those of us in the United States, might be jaded against things that don't look as good. Hell, it definitely affects how we feel about other people, cars, houses, televisions, movies, why would it suddenly not affect video games too? Anything that requires visual stimuli can have a bias towards it, just because of some polish, or the way something looks.

Nostalgia certainly factors in, people can ignore flaws in control schemes, graphics, or story if they have fond memories of the previous game. Sure, it might not be the same game quality wise, but you'll probably play through it just so you can compare the experience as a whole to it's predecessor.

There are others, but it's getting late, and my brain is kinda failing at the moment. Regardless, I will stick by my guns and say a game done with a good sense of art direction and graphical style can be done on any system out there now, so simply graphics should never be the determining factor, the game itself should be, and your personal tastes.

To address the topic:
Age does play a factor. But it is not the only one.

To adress all the off topic stuff:
As for Wii owners, A good portion of the people who actually went and bought a Wii are 18-45 demo. (I can't link right now, because I am at work but I will link it later)

This generation isn't about profit for Sony or MS. They wanted to know the other one out of the market. However, I think components are dropping faster than either one expected and both will survive their bad moves. So niether has accomplished anything. Well other than creating some killer games for us to play while they continually up budgets.

I Agree.

IMO comparing Gears or Resistance with Zelda is a bad comparison as the gameplay is so different, maybe comparing Zelda with Oblivion would be a better comparison. I would say the good graphics and game complexity does add a lot to the Oblivion experience.

You don't need to have the best graphics to create the best game, but it can help a lot if implemented well. For instance the Ratchet and Clank titles for the PS2 are good games, but the PS3 game under development looks so much more interesting with twice the level sizes, great graphics, more game complexity, etc.

I liked the original Quake for the PC a lot, but with the later 3DFX glide patch significantly enhancing the graphics on the original, just the improved graphics (the actual gameplay remained the same) did add to the game for me.

It should be comon knowledge that graphics just matter for the first 30 minutes. This is even proved by some institutes, I have to look for the article again if you don´t believe what I write (so please believe me, if a fanboy comes in now and claims I just said it to defend Nintendo I´ll have to look two hours for the article just for the sake to proof the fanboy wrong.)

It works basically that way: Graphics "hype" your mind when you see them the first time. They create something like a flow in your brain, upping your fun and improving the experience. Problem is, it just works for 30 minutes. In the article they used a scale to watch how much fun gamers had while they played. A game with good graphics had a number of 300 in the begining, a game with "ugly" graphics had about 90 in the begining. After 30 minutes, the numbers for the game with the good graphics started to decline, while the ugly games numbers went up.

After another 30 minutes the games (which were rated about the same when they first hit the market) meet about 200 and stayed there.

You can whatch this phenomenon if you use live arcade or virtual console. Let someone play Ocarina of time who never played N64 before. They´ll usually say it looks ugly. Put it away. I hate it. After 30 minutes they suddenly start to have fun. In fact, if you play Ocarina of Time, they start to have more fun with it than while playing Twilight Princess. I tried it with 3 of my friends, everyone liked OoT better after 1 hour of gaming. 50 minutes earlier they liked Twilight Princess more.

So what does that mean?

It bascally means graphics make it easier to get into a game, but their effect dissapears after a certain time in play.

Or to say it different: Playing on an Atari in 1980 was just as fun as playing Gears of War on 360 now.

Prooven Fact. Don´t force me to look for this article please

For me great graphics are not that important compared to great physics. I would rather have a super smart AI and perfect physics than perfect graphics. The way I see it in console games graphics always suck, if you want graphics come on over to the pc side. If you are willing to spend 600 for a PS3 for a gaming machine (with little multimedia capabilities) you probably should consider spending 1000 more to have a real computer, with numerous more uses.

I have been playing since the atari days, while my brother was been playing since the PS1 days, but I don't notice too much differences in our taste in video games. He doesn't seem to enjoy graphics as your original post might suggest. Much more focus on gameplay. 

Omg! Out of interest I went to dxdiag, and clicked on the Display tab. Under device name it says NVIDIA RIVE TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro! :P Well it's nice to know that even though this isn't the PC I use to play games, but that it has a ledgendary graphics card!

Anyway, I'd agree with Ledgend and say that as long as the gameplay is there, it definately adds to game. I got C & C (yes the original version, 95, MS-DOS) working on my Dad's ancient laptop,  and although it is still as fun as it ever was. I definately still like playing Generals and RA2. I would say the only reason I enjoy playing it is because it was one of the first games I ever played, considering I was born in 1991. So I would say that with me at least, unless I have fond memories of it, there's no way I'd pick up a game that is pretty awful to todays standards. For instance I never have any intention of playing on NES/SNES or N64, because I don't have any memorable moments of them, I only played the N64, and to me, any game on the NES/SNES is frankly crap. However that's opinion, so don't bash me for saying that :P

I think the way 12-21 year old boys in the west, tend to think about computer games in a way that can make graphics more important to them. And it's this group that's also most keen to avoid nintendo style 'kiddie graphics'.

I think a lot of this group can still feel a bit insecure about enjoying computer games, and 'cool graphics' are somthing that can be quickly and easily appreciated by people who don't play games, and sound a lot less nerdy than taking the time to explain why leveling up your RPG character is so important to you.