2K boss Christoph Hartmann recently revealed his belief that photorealistic graphics are required before gaming can truly reach the next level.
In an interview with GamesIndustry International, Hartmann explained the reasoning behind his thoughts: "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."
"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."
He went on: "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."
Whilst Hartmann is, arguably, talking nonsense, his point holds a little war. Games will certainly be able to deliver a greater range of emotions when character's facial expressions are more clearly defined. But I would argue that there are many games that have absolutely no trouble evoking a whole range of emotions with the technology currently available.