did you just "quote" me and yet summarized what I said within the quote? That's not word for word what I said. Regardless the point is the same. I was gaming during the NES and SNES era and of course developers are always going to look to push graphics to get you to bite as its the first thing you see. The difference from then and today is that back then, you got what you saw. The commercials were all gameplay. A lot of commercials now are either CGI, quick time events which look bad ass, or action scenes from views you'll not be gaming from. Graphics have advanced to the point now that the games don't look too far off from the CGI trailers but still, its misleading.
I really don't understand what the
marketing materials for a game have to do with the
quality of the games themselves, but if the technology had existed back in the 90s, we
totally would've seen the same thing back then (just see any of Square's trailers for their PS1 Final Fantasy re-releases, which used the new CGI cutscenes). Instead, we got wacky live action trailers that the games looked nothing like.
While we're on the subject of "gameplay over graphics" in older game commercials, though, how about this
NINTENDO trailer for the original Legend of Zelda on the NES:
Just for emphasis, the
first two lines of the commercial:
Nerd 1: "Did you see the latest Nintendo newsletter?"
Nerd 2: "
WOAH! Nice graphics! I'd like to get my hands on that game!"
Behold that the
very first thing Nintendo tries to drive into you with this commercial is
how amazing the graphics were (for the time). Yeah, "gameplay over graphics", indeed.