[martinced]

I think one real lesson here is that super-shiny high end graphics are not what counts. The gameplay is by far the most important ingredient in any game's success.

More than ten years ago back when I playing Counter-Strike (CS still being immensively succesful btw) I was using a "low poly" mod: this would replace the models of the players with models made of fewer polygons (the head became a cube, etc.) because it would give me a faster framerate.

And the shitty graphics didn't matter: the important thing was the gameplay.

If you can have both great gameplay, great graphics and great perfs, go for it.

But if you have to choose and want to get succesful: cut down the graphics budget. That's not what's going to make your game succesful.