It is an absolute necessity that games reach the level of real-life graphics, according to CEO of 2k Games, Cristoph Hartmann.
Seeing that series like Call of Duty, Medal of Honor and Halo are successful many developers rather stay in safe-haven by following the already inundated shooting game trend. Unique and Genre-bending games like Journey and Limbo are risky and not easy to come by. But if the industry really wants to reach the next level and see the coming of new genres, games must have photorealistic graphics, argues Christoph Hartmann.
The film industry still has a bigger advantage over the gaming industry since it can easily portray strong emotions like love and sadness. This is difficult in games, so developers go for safer bets.
"Recreating a Mission Impossible experience in gaming is easy; recreating emotions in Brokeback Mountain is going to be tough, or at least very sensitive in this country... it will be very hard to create very deep emotions like sadness or love, things that drive the movies," he said. "Until games are photorealistic, it'll be very hard to open up to new genres. We can really only focus on action and shooter titles; those are suitable for consoles now" says Hartmann.
He continues:
"To dramatically change the industry to where we can insert a whole range of emotions, I feel it will only happen when we reach the point that games are photorealistic; then we will have reached an endpoint and that might be the final console."
Hartmann's observations make sense, but we can argue that the gaming industry is already starting to discover how to bring emotions to video games effectively with Spec Ops: The line and Heavy Rain. Arguably photorealism helps, but is not primary.