Good point.  Although I don't know how anecdotal my quality perceptions are? To go back to the movie analogy, the big hollywood 'blockbusters' more often then not - are successful commercially, despite their critical snubbing.  Call it shallow, superficial or unsophisticated but the vast majority of the 'masses' want to bear witness to, and be 'wowed' by the visual spectacle.

By in large - I don't believe that the videogame industry can survive under the same dynamic.  The commercial success is more heavily reliant on the critical success because of the costs variance between a movie ticket and a video game.

If the reviewers can see that alot of people will enjoy the experience, and that the graphics play an integral part to that enjoyment, then the scores should reflect this.

I find it hard to believe how someone can make a blanket statement like 'graphics are irrelevant'.  I can't see how anyone who plays Gran Turismo 1 getting the same level of enjoyment or perceiving it as the same quality as Gran Turismo 5.

YEah the thing is there is a differance between what graphics SHOULD be rated as and what they oftentime ARE rated.

I think a lot of people rate it based on aesthestics i.e. oh it looks pretty, or awesome.

and if it doesn't personally appeal to them, oh its crap.

To me that's not informative.

I feel graphics should have something of a significant bearing on the game for the sake that it IS in fact a Videogame, many other aspects can be impaired by graphical glitches, errors, and anomolies.

Basically, to me, and other Videogame "purists" if you will, graphical ratings SHOULD be based on performance. What it means is A) did the developer make some kind of effort to utilize the processing power of the system (i.e. does the game in some way demand a full job from the hardware, whether it is number of chars, or detailed environments, or an array of well managed effects etc.. B) Does the game run smoothly throughout the entire operation, or is the framerate consistant. THIS is huge. (This is also another reason why I believe SONY systems to be inferior, it can't keep the framerate as well as ANY of its competitors). C) Do you find many errors, bugs, graphics glitches (things like white streaks or frame breaks) things that should've been caught in testing.
And so on, this is where the Technichal arguments come in on wether one game is graphically better than another.

I hope this is helpful.

You know, maybe graphics shouldn't matter. Who cares what the game looks like? And maybe sound shouldn't matter either. Why do I want good voice acting? And why should companies invest in big budget soundtracks or orchestral musics? All that matters is gameplay. And we had gameplay perfected back in the SNES days!!

So in otherwords.  You are willing to accept a game that plays worse, if it looks prettier at some degree.

See, we're almost in perfect agreement there. However, I tend to base all my opinions on the consumer view. In my mind, the consumer is always the goal, and you should therefore always give the consumer what it wants. The ones that succeed best in this will be the most successful. If the consumers only want awesome graphics, give them awesome graphics. If they don't want that, don't bother.

Reviewers should follow the same road. Give consumers the kind of reviews they want. My guess is that most them want reviews to be informative and be based on about the same values as they themselves entertain. My guess would be that most people that play videogames would want to know how fun a game is. If the experience is worth the money. And as such, all elements that add and subtracts from the experience should be accounted for.

So while we mostly agree on the specifics, our perspectives are different. Mine is more consumer-centered, and yours is more producer-centered. I'm guessing this is what gave rise to the argument in the first place.