Miller wrote: I wish these game-making people would just relax a bit when it comes to graphics quality, and spend a little more of the resources demanded by a game on the gameplay.
I personally prefer games with better graphics, maybe this is because I don't really spend much time gaming and for the small amount of time I do play the game I'd prefer to be visually stunned.
I believe there is a reason why developers focus on graphics equally to gameplay. To understand why we have to properly understand the hardware the game is played on.
A console consists of a Processor (CPU & GPU), Ram (Standard & Video).
These components affect the performance of the system.
Graphics is rendered in realtime via the consoles graphics card in other terms GPU and Video Ram.
Most non-visual gameplay elements are executed via the consoles CPU processor.
Thefor game developers need to make use of both areas, graphics (GPU) and gameplay (CPU).
Now of course, gameplay isn't completly cpu orientated. It really depends what happening in the game. Lets say you consider gameplay having lots of different vehicles on the map, this would require a faster graphics processor (GPU) while using CPU to AI control them.
But if you wanted to have a mission where the player could drive a much more realistic vehicle many more actions would be executed therfor a better CPU would be required.
I haven't explained this in very much detail, but I hope you get what I mean. Developers don't have a choice all the time. However they can focus on getting the gameplay right and then work on the graphics provided they have the resources avaliable on the console.