My friend recently showed me the game Infinity Blade and I was comparing it to Skyrim, graphics wise. Infinit Blade is pretty nice and has some nice flippin graphics. There are some things Skyrim has kind of forgot....just look at all the retextured mods for Skyrim.

What do you guys think? Have you seen Inifnity Blade?

Please don't compare Skyrim to an app...

The app is technically a game, is it not?

And some games do start out small like as an app. But you never know how the company my grow from apps to something bigger.

Ugh. Apps are ruining the gaming industry. People expect more for less.

I never really understood this mentality.

You can get bite-sized 'games' for mobile phones and such to waste an hour or so for a buck or two, AND you can also pay $60 for a full-fledged 100+ hour game like Skyrim.

The only 'thing' I see is "ruining the gaming industry" is rehashed games, games with with less than 15-hour campaigns, and games that sell for $60 when they are clearly made with only multiplayer on mind.

If we had less of all these three cases I am certain "Apps" would not affect the average gamer in the slightest.

I think this is not the full picture. Okay, they are not actually mobile phone games but games for handheld devices like PSP or NDS: there are some crazy Japanese stuff out there with more than 100 hours of gameplay - some of them are even entertaining for the taste of western gamers. What I hate about these iOS/Android games is that a touchscreen is not ment for real gaming and it can never compete with a gamepad or a keyborad/mouse combo no matter how intuitive and creative the user interface implemented in a specific game is. But as mobile hardware gets more and more advanced (2GHz quad-core CPUs coming in Q1 and Q2 2012), it is inevitable that handheld games are getting closer and closer to this generations console games in terms of graphics. I won't mind playing a game on my mobile phone if it is as complex and deep as today's console games and if there's a way to make it more comfortable although less mobile. For example HTC Flyer supports OnLive and can be paired with OnLive's controller and hooked up to a HDTV, PS3/PSVita will have an option in some games that if you start gaming on the street/bus/etc on your handheld Vita, after saving the game, you may continue the same game at home on your PS3.

About < 15h games: I think the gaming industry's mentality changed from "By Gamers, For Gamers" to By Businessmen, For Very Casual Gamers. Putting too much content in a game or making it too complex, more hardcoe and less mainstream is simply not profitable. And why should they make it longer than 10 hours? If you want more, you should by the DLCs.

Multiplayer: I don't see the problem with that. For example these war FPS games are AAA products in every way so the $60 price tag is more or less justified but with 5 hour single player campaigns the only thing that adds value to them is a strong multiplayer part. And I think their fans are well aware of that and that is the primary reason why they are spending money for them.

Infinity Blade 2: it looks really awesome and can compete with some older console games in this generation in terms of graphics but I played like 10 mins with Infinity Blade 1 then lost interest in it. This would never happen to Skyrim, it just svcks you in and it won't let you go because there's just so much in it.
Is there a chance to see a game with such complexity and vast content on mobile phones in the near future? Not impossible, but not very likely either because the businessman says "we won't invest that much money into developing for a ~$10 game".

Ok....size does matter....

You put Skyrim on a small screen and it will look alot better than it's doing now.
You put Infinity blade on a big screen (which i had through ipad). It'll look less attractive.

It's like watching an old movie, as long as your VLC is turned down to a small window it looks good (quality wise) compared to a fullscreen.