In this time and age with internet and forums there's no lack of first mouths.
Not if you don't have people's interest first. By the same logic that makes it easy to spread word quickly, it's every bit as easy to stop the spread of word -- all it takes is one mistake. But if you prefer, then I'll rephrase to "first mouths that speak
positively and
loudly" You also seem to forget that the average buyer isn't out scanning the net for info constantly or chattering on forums... or even buying from gaming-specific retailers as often as from general retailers like Walmart.
I don't know about you, but I find it rather rare that I hear about the graphics first about a game. Screenshots tends to come long after the initial hype.
You haven't paid much attention then. That's certainly true of major huge-budget AAA projects with production values so great that early hype is a must, but those really aren't the majority of titles that come out. These are just the majority of the titles that most of us hear and talk about as if . There are several times more titles that come out where the first thing you'll ever see is screenshots and/or trailers. The thing is that it's these major titles that get all the attention, which only goes to show that the more common case lacks "first mouths."
To be honest, I don't know a single game that succeeded without having the fun factor.
I reiterate, you haven't paid much attention. In fact, for this one, I'd all but say you haven't paid any attention at all. Because the majority of your sales happen in the first two weeks after release, there are things which are commercially more powerful than fun like "hype" and "name" and "getting in bed with the press" (the last one isn't a regular occurrence or anything, but it isn't exactly unusual, either). And like Mintmaster posted above, fun doesn't often impact these.
There have been plenty of good looking hyped up games that failed, because the fun wasn't there. And there are plenty of games with non-impressive or even ugly graphics that succeeded anyway.
The latter is an exception, not the rule (I'm assuming that you're still keeping things in persepective wrt what sort of titles a given title would be competing against). I can think of just as many if not more games which weren't particularly great on gameplay or in some cases, just plain bad, but looked good enough or had something worth hyping enough to hold people's attention so as to get that early sales velocity. Did such releases have great long-term staying power? Not often, but they didn't need it to be financially successful.
The former happens a fair bit, because it does take more than graphics to compete, but either way you have to make people think you are competitive enough to be worth picking up, or you're done.
Of course, the most common story (more common than pretty much all others combined) is the game which is more than adequate in all areas, but simply was not big enough -- it just fell in a shadow. Ultimately, the overall problem with marketability is one of being noticed in a positive light and staying there... That's why so many cookie-cutter titles are out there -- certain things are known to work. People aren't totally non-forgiving, but there are limits to what will pass, and dropping below that range is not safe nor will it ever be. In terms of
absolutes, you can actually sacrifice quite a bit graphically or physics-wise or AI-wise or whatever for a little more power to be dedicated elsewhere, as long as you make up for it in some way. But making it sound as simple as "fun=everything" is incalculably naive. It's not that people don't want fun or want graphics only, but that they want everything.
It's easy to say something like we've dropped the polycount on our main character by ~15,000 tris from a year ago, but that means nothing without some point of reference. What people notice is the relative difference, and you can't hide everything behind a veil of "but look at the lighting!". And there's only so much you can get away with anywhere and still have a shot at success (let alone actually achieving it). You can't cross that line and hope lightning will strike.
Doing that is just never a good idea. Sure, you can refer to it as bravery or blazing a trail, but there's a fine line between bravery from foolhardiness.
