I do software for a living, but I have no experience in the gaming world, so excuse my gaming economics ignorance here.

I assume it takes more manhours to create the models, skins, tiles, animations, etc. for the newer high-eye-candy games than it does for lower quality graphics. Developing the engine for such graphics probably takes much longer to accomplish as well (although engines can be reused). I would imagine that there is a sweet spot somewhere, where increasing the eye-candy will just be a waste of time and money for the program without raising the cost of the game beyond the standard price. Can the artistic modelling tools keeping up with the complexity? Will we reach a point in gaming where the video cards will offer so much power that it is economically unfeasible to use it?

And if that point is reached, can they start putting gameplay back in, please?