I don't think we necessarily need photorealism. Some of the best games here as far as graphics are pretty damn close. However, we will get it in the coming years.

But whether or not you want photorealism or not doesn't matter, because we still need better and better graphics cards, that use less energy. The ones these days used to render near photo-realistic games at high quality turn your computer into a space heater. Gamers need better and better graphics cards, just in case one of the creators of one of the games that they might want will need that power to display their vision.

I personally am not one to chase photo-realism. I often like arcade and old-school games. But I won't say that graphics don't matter. Every once in a while I like to play some of the old-school doom games. Playing them with the new open source engines is a world's of difference! It's so much more! Makes me annoyed that all these closed source games are so often just abandoned. I hope at least a few of them eventually open source.