Honestly, I agree to an extent. I like watching at a well-designed scenery but I think it hurts games if it takes the priority. I'm not playing games for that, but for cool gamedesign ideas and my own experiences with mechanics. That's tl;dr, next is my rant, for I had a long bus ride.
Graphics are very marketable and ad-friendly, easier to implement\control rather than changes to engine or scripts (you need to understand first) and they may cover up the lack in other departments. Effective managers love that. CGI guys at Disney are on strike because this sentiment held as true in movie industry too, and they are overloaded, filming the whole movie over chromakey. Computer graphics almost replaced everything else.
In my perspective, this trend in AAA lowers the quality of the end product, makes it safer to develop (formulaic reiteration) but just ok to play, mostly unremarkable. Indie and small gamestudios can't compete with them in visuals, so they risk and try to experiment, bring novelty, and sometimes win a jackpot.
Like, obviously, Minecraft, that was initially coded by Notch alone. It invented indie scene as we know it now. It put tech and mechanics over looks, and the whole world was playing it. No one cared for how abstract it is being addicted to the gameplay.
Playing older games, I see, that they were in this race too, like how (recently remastered) Quake 2 was a great visual upgrade over Quake 1. People sold an arm and a leg to play them on HIGH at that time. And how they nodded like yeah, now it's just like a real life watching at a 640x320 screenshot, or how marketologists sold it. But somehow they were made completely different in many ways, not gfx alone, and that's for a braindead shooter. I feel it with my fingers. I see it in how the game logic works. This sensation was greater for me than anything I see on the screen.
Not being able to recall what happened in what CoD game, I become more amused with how gamedesign, presented via code, affects the feeling of a game. How in Disco Elysium all these mental features made it stand out. How Hotline: Miami did extreme violence so stylish. How Dwarf Fortress taught me to care about ASCII symbols on my screen but accepting the fun of loosing them. How the first MGS's Psycho Mantis read my savefiles from other games and vibrated my controller on the floor with his psychic power.
These moments and feelings can't be planned and managed like creation of visual assets. And they are why I like games, as outdated as NES ones or as ugly as competitive Quake config looks. They, like making love with a loving partner, hits different than a polished act of a fit and thin sex-worker. They bring unique experience instead of selling you a horse-painted donkey.
And that's why I don't really care about graphics and dislike their unending progress.
And would even require Windows Eleven soon, banning older CPUs!
I agree with you. One factor I still have hope for in that angle are new handhelds. We had Switch, we had Steam Deck and its newer competitors. And they all judged by their battery life and also has small screen where gfx don't matter as much. Players on a long roadtrip or shift intuitively chose less consumptive games over those eating the battery in a hour. I wonder if Steam can make a special category for energy-light games, just for that obvious reason. And it, in reverse, inspiring devs to make games to cater to that usercase. I can dream.