Yes. Look at games like Super Mario Galaxy. Nintendo has put so much time and effort into creating an epic gaming experience. Can they break even on a game like this? Companies are spending so much time and money trying to outdo each other, it's like a nuclear arms race! Games like Super Mario Galaxy will help bring an end to gaming as we know it.

On the contrary, it destroys nothing. All it shows is that the relationship doesn't hold always but thats common sense. Its also unreliable to consider an individual game. The fact remains that graphics and gameplay are highly correlated.

Based off the reviews at IGN (Numbers do not include any games released in the last week or so):

Wii: 0.623

Xbox 360: 0.67

PS3: 0.622

Now a correlation of 1.00 implies that the two factors move together always. A correlation coefficient of 0 implies that the two factors are independent. And a correlation coefficient of -1.00 implies that they are perfectly negatively correlated, that is there is always a tradeoff between the two factors.

Now there appears to be clear evidence that graphics and gameplay are positively correlated and move together. That is not to say that one causes the other. In fact I would suspect that the two move together because of an unobserved third variable, skill. Another factor would also be the budget that a developer has to work with. The most important thing however is that gameplay and graphics move together and that there is no trade-off between the two.

So I guess its fair to say that your two game sample hardly "destroys" my 326 game sample.

This has been a lesson hard learned but one that the industry is thankfully learning from rather quickly. Even Kaz had made mention of Sony realizing the shortcomming of trying to reach too high too soon and will be scaling back their projects to achieve more realistic expectations for games during this early part of the generation. The Wii is perhaps the epitome of this lesson showing the merits of modesty, innovation and manuverability vs excess, expansion and Demographicentricity.

In every gaming generation of the past the technology for the next gen had always been there just not the economy, and it was just a waiting game before the economy was ready for the next step to be taken. This, however, was the first generation that there was no real generational technological step forward waiting for us, we had in many respects, plateau'd. Sony and MS responded to this by trying to create their own technological step forward but in doing so sacrificed economy doubling the cost of their average console in just one generation (the ultimate indication that this was not a true step forward, but a forced one).

If I may indulge my inner Nerd, think of Dragonball Z and the Super Saiyan transformation. When facing Cell, Vegeta and Trunks trained to go beyond regular Super Saiyan (think Last Gen consoles) and in doing so they forced themselves to ascend beyond the level of regular Super Saiyan but it wasn't a true next step forward, so as a result they were powerful but slow and lacked stamina, Vegeta held back though to keep himself at a manageable balance between agility and power (360) but Trunks went even further for more power at an even greater cost to his ability to fight (PS3). However the clever Goku and his son Gohan trained to reach the upper eschelon of what regular Super Saiyan could achieved (Wii) which allowed them to finally reach the true level beyond Super Saiyan, Super Saiyan 2 (whatever will succeed the Wii).

I don't really think that the large budgets of some of today's games is to blame for them being 6-10 hours long.  The reason (in my opinion) why many games in the past (especially during the NES era) were 20+ hours long is simply because the average game back then was harder than today's average game.  Look at games like Battletoads, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Contra, etc, the reason those games are the length they are is because of their difficulty level, had those same games been released with today's average difficulty level for games they likely would be 6 hour games, probably even shorter.

Many be Epic gaming is not good for the publishers but I think they can turn there hand to downloadable games which are cheap to make and can have high sales

(I haven't read the full thread so I appologize if I'm restating something someone has mentioned)

Through most of the 1990s Hollywoold was fairly conservative about the scale of the projects they were producing; at the time many movies were not making much of a profit so only movies with good writing, good directors, and good actors were able to get much in the way of financing to produce their movies. This resulted in most big budget movies actually being good movies and people rushed out to see them in the theater to catch the spectacle.

Now, along comes DVD which is cheaper to manufacture than VHS, is more expensive than VHS (to the consumer) and (for some reason) people buy way more DVD movies than they bought VHS movies so suddenly movies studios were making money on (practically) any movie they produce. Movie studios started to bank-roll many more big budget movies and many writers and directors were able to produce movies they wanted to produce for years. Big budget movies (on the whole) were still doing fairly well because most of them were still high quality but many were begining to flop at the box-office (although, still doing fairly well with DVD sales included).

Today practically every movie that is released is a big budget movie with almost no quality controll; Michael Bay walks into a room, says he wants to make a Transformers movie with "Wicked" special effects and he gets a check written for $200,000,000.00 without anyone asking "Will this have a plot or character development?" Certainly, this hasn't hurt every studio but the industry as a whole is complaining about losing money and they blame it on movie downloads.

Many people (like myself) have been stating that the industry needs to return to its roots and focus on better writing, acting and direction and for them to return to producing original stories; stop making so many comic book movies and videogame movies because (for the most part) they're awful. Certain people will hear this as me stating that "Special Effects don't matter" and will disagree without hearing the content of what I am saying.

I see the same basic patter playing out with the videogame industry and the 'rise' of the Playstation brand being very much like the adoption of DVD. On the whole I think that developers need to stop focusing on graphics so much and focus more on gameplay; the industry needs less sequels and less licenced properties. Had Lair (as an example) been produced with graphics only somewhat better than the Wii's graphics and Factor 5 focused more on producing a quality gameplay experience it would have sold better and been far more profitable.

Good god, he still has to walk into the room? I figured at this point they'd just mail him the check. =P 

Anyways I agree with everything you say, and would like to add, the Video game industry is much smaller than the movie industry, and I find it disturbing and very unhealthy that parts of it seem to be following the same downward spiral as movies in terms of content quality, but with far less forms of income to fall back on.

Movies make money at the box office and the DVD sales, games are just the disc sale. Movies tend to have a lot more merchandizing as well often including a game tie in. Just doesn’t seem to be a good place to move to.

I understand that some people don't like big budget epic games but nobody is forcing anyone to buy them. Just like with movies you have a choice if you want to go to the theater and see a 100+ million dollar popcorn flick or if you want to go watch a 5-10 million dollar movie. I think it's better to have more choices so I don't understand people who want to eliminate certain kinds of games entirely.

I also don't understand the logic some people have that seem to feel a big budget game means the publisher is going to focus less on gameplay or storyline or whatever, I mean at the end of the day these are still games they're making and because they have so much riding on them it seems pretty reasonable (at least to me) that they would want to make a great game. Does anyone really think that in a development meeting for these games they say "Ok we want amazing graphics but f*ck the gameplay we don't need that"?

To be honest I like the way things are now because companies that make games with large budgets are held accountable for those games, if they make a stinker the chances are they'll pay for it financially and it will lead them to either step up their game or they'll be forced out of the industry entirely. It's survival of the fittest and that's usually when companies do their best. Compare that to budget game makers (or those with medium budgets) who take far less risks and because it takes far fewer copies to break even they are not held as accountable for flops. Simply put there are companies that're thriving on budget titles and it's not because they're making quality games.

I don't agree with quite everything you illuding to, but you're mark on in your over all message. Epic games are showing the fastest turn around in developer reaction to failed trend in gaming I've ever seen. Incidentally, not all Epic gaming fails, its somewhat of a darwinian experience where lessons are taken from what can be made epic and still be profitable and what can be epic and still be longer than 6-10 hours. But for the most part I see epic gaming as a failure, its the epitome of this generation's crux, trying to force the next generational leap in gaming instead of letting it happen. Instead of waiting one more generation for there to be a true step forward, we're going to force our consoles to take a step forward at an increased cost of the console itself to the consumer. Instead of waiting for the next step forward/trend in gaming to emerge, we're going to force it by taking what we know (Cinematic Gaming) and make it even more grand a spectacle (Epic Gaming). The biggest problem with this generation is the industry trying to force a clear distinction between this generation and last when only Nintendo seemed to realize there really couldn't be one, at least not yet.