100%, and the thriving indie scene proves that. Lots of more visually simple 3D games, or even basic looking 2D games, that have fun mechanics can even outsell the most glistening of AAA games these days. And good art direction or a unique visual style tends to be worth more than pushing for flat photorealism anyway.
But I’m also a fan of games that look amazing (and play great, of course), so I’m always interested to see who’s pushing the envelope. And these kinds of tech demos are meant to impress on the visual front, and generally they do, but it’s just a bit of a bummer we’ve all kinda gotten to a point with them that’s basically “Yeah, that’s nice, but what will you have to cut down once you have to create those assets for an entire world, populate it with characters and logic, and target a wider range of systems?”
