it costs them too much money to focus on gameplay AND looks....hence why all of the recent games that i have played, (96 percent of the 360, about 70 percent of the games on comp) in the last two years have been massive fail. i actually bought a 360, paid 120 bucks for 2 games. brought it back 3 days later and downloaded a snes emulator. its why i still run moo. its why doom 1 and 2 is on my desktop. shit, the only games that i buy now are comp that can be modded, simply because i can change it to actually be DECENT. WOW PRETTY LAZERS the end. great. everyones worried about balance. there all worried about pretty effects. no story? 3 hours into a game OH YOU BEAT IT LOL THNKS FOR 60 BUCKS. to the devs out here, fck graphics. fck balancing for multiplayer online. make. a. story. line. please. BTW most of this rage comes from the epic fail of ps3 360 psp and ds(well the latter two are good for emulators to play older games) .....wii...is good practice for wagglin. i guess?

im sick of reading the back of a box that says something like...

"In a universe where so and so is on the run from so and so and these traders they have to unight and build there scrap ships to fight so and so but then, so and so that was thought to be banished for ever so and so amount of years ago and then OH NO there back woo and they have these phsionic powers and then OH NO those guys that were chasing so and so are almost there what will happen? you will choose their fates to either victory or defete and this mystery thing chasing so and so is something that so and so made but WAIT oh now those guys that were in the trade thing that were like vets or something are going back to war with those other guys and theres no one to defend all these mfking planets and these so and so people have all this technology n shit because theve been around for like 10k more years than everyone else and those other people have these super phy powers and the trade people dont even have an army OH NO."

but really

all races are equal. there is no camp. multiplayer is filled with asshats that will send wave after wave of small frigs against you so u counter with waves of a diff small frig. and in single plaer, you all start out equal, everyone balances. and that mystery race we used to draw you in? yea we were fucking with you there not in the game. ONE MORE THING. we MIGHT fix this stuff in an expansion so buy it too lol.

with that rant over, the graphics in this game are really pretty.

Maybe I should just be patient and wait for the Total War series to evolve to that level..
I mean its one of the only on-going game titles that has any true integrity left..
I dont know if im getting older and fussier or games are getting worse and worse as the graphics get ever better..

The death of point and click was hard enough to over-come (and its affects scar me till this day) but I thought that turn-based conquest/diplomatic games would only get better each year.
anyways Im gonna stop moaning now, I just wanted to check to see if there were any others disapointed with the state of the genre specified..
To end id like to agree, along the lines SRSLWYTH spoke of.. That balance in too many genres of games seems to be wholly between graphics and making it multi-player, before anything else story included is considered.
I do get the feeling that the people designing and producing 90/ish% of games are not actuall gamers themselves.. shame