hope for graphics so real I cannot tell the game apart from reality. Hopefully in 2 more gens this will happen.

Graphics will matter less and less. The success of the Wii is good indication that most people just "don't give a fuck" about better graphics than we have now.

And yet people go OMG when they see Heavy Rain...a game that has not-so-realistic human characters...if games could look indistinguishable from real-life, many times better than any game on the market today, and be economically viable, I'd call that a sweet spot.

Not all games will have to look photorealistic...but once we have that ability and it's cost effective (AKA stop throwing the old "I don't want big budget games that only focus on graphics) we can do whatever with the graphics in games.

I mean, the Wii is not a good indicator of what will be popular in 10 years. Just because people aren't all on the "HD" train, doesn't mean realistic graphics won't be popular.

I think theres a bad impression on when we hit that sweet spot. Personally I believe we hit that rather a large number of years ago. From a console stand point there has always been this push for better graphics. Yes even the Wii is better than the GC, just not so much a great leap than the other two.

The PC industry is an entirely different story. If we look at games released by the big names, EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, Microsoft.... we get the same story as the console. Continuous push. What we should consider is that there are SO MANY MORE developers and publishers on the PC since the internet. There are SO MANY MORE games that it borders on the ludicrous. The level of graphics range a vast wide array. From C64 to Bleeding Edge tech visuals are being developed.

Many PC gamers and i'm not reffering to the ones after the above mentioned developers play game where the graphics are sub par the console bretheren. Puzzle Pirates, Puzzle Quest, Bejeweled, Mugen, Pirates of the Carribean Online , Runescape.... I could go on for a massivivly long post on these titles. All of them are played.

The console industry will sooner or later and come to the same conclusion. There is no sweet spot. The games graphics will eqaute to the available budget, art direction and translate to cost. Bigger budget games higher cost.

This of course doesn't mean that graphics won't go up. They will and do. 2d games are starting to heavily use SVG and interpretive animtation with scaling(Flash being common) to make games and animations easier to develope. Technology goes on. However the rush to push the PC is over by the average develeper(not big name). This will come to the console world. PSN, Live Store and WiiWare are starting to bring this around.

Graphic gee whiz tends to last about as long as cotton candy. Everyone went nuts over Imax… the first couple of times they saw it. Now they’re closing all over the country.

I’ve shown my wife a dozen times how she can see her favorite shows and movies in HD just by changing channels, but she doesn’t even think it’s worth the trouble.

HD television took so long to get here because the public just didn’t give a rat’s ass and a majority still doesn’t.

I’ve been working with ultra-high definition imaging for so long that I just look at the content now.

Counting the hair pores on Mario's butt just doesn't add that much to my gaming experience.