Graphics, as in graphical fidelity, polygon count, etc. are valueless to me.
Art style is everything. I don’t care if I can see the pixels in the game, I still play the same SNES my family had 25 years ago. The game has to look good, and graphical fidelity is a tool to help achieve that, but it’s only a tool, and useless without the appropriate art direction.
Honestly, he’s right. Game prices are the same 60-70 dollars they’ve been for 30 years, but nothing else has stayed the same price that long. With inflation, a game should be around 200 dollars.
Super Mario Bros 3 came out in the last half of 1988 and costed $50 dollars, or around 127 dollars. It also costed about $800,000 to develop, which is about $2 million today.
Nowadays, it costs around $80 million (about 40x) on average to make a AAA title that costs $60 (about half). This is why all these games have cash shops and battle passes and paid dlc and whatnot: they need to make up that extra cost somewhere.