While graphics is important in games, just like other "solo-visual" mediums, a good artstyle is more important than realistic ones. A "good" artstyle can be much more easy to develop if they are creative enough.
I would remove/reduce the following to get the costs down:
General detail graphics (I mean, a compelling gameworld is not about the texture resolution, it's about what happens there, who you meet and what "exists".
Online aspect (I'm a singleplayer ).
Real Orchestrated Music (music is one of the most important aspects in a compelling game experience, but it should not be limited to only orchestrated music, any music that evokes emotions will be perfect)
Length of game/main campaign. (some games need to be short, and some long. the important thing is to remove the "fluff").
Shorter loading times+ability to play in 4K. (loading times are important, but not game/breaking).
Voiced story cutscenes (let’s say you lose 50%). (voices if there is budget for it, but absolutely not essential)
Size of playing area/map+ variety of areas. (size is not important, it's more important the player gets invested in the world).
Celebrity voices/faces. (why? I prefer new people.)
Amount of NPCs inhabiting the world. (depends on the game. important with many npc in some games, and others not).
An example of a great game I've lately been stuck in: Shiren the wanderer. It has awesome music, a small gameworld (compared to other games), minimal story but good enough and good characters, AND the gameplay is extremely addicting. I'm at least (if not more) invested in this game than (for example) elden ring and armored core. With that I mean, of course armored core vi is amazing in it's own right, but I would not put Shiren below it at all, it's about how it plays, looks and sounds (some of the later tracks invoke FF7 music for me). Also, it has around 900 items, which is more than any AAA game I know of, and almost all of them is intersting. This is because of instead putting their time and energy on the "fluff", they put in on the experience. If we got AAA games with the gameplay of Shiren, the gaming landscape would be bigger, cheaper to develop and possibly more creativity? #1 is a compelling game experience, #2 is what they can add according to their budget, to fill it out. Just don't do blotated games with 70% of it running/walking and 30% gameplay. The best games were created with limits in mind.
I can't stand most "celebrities". Even using an Ed Sheeran song in Pokémon Scarlet/Violet feels grossly out of place (and he's one of the less objectionable celebrities out in the wild these days). Keep that crap out of games, especially Japanese ones.
Orchestral scores can also make money through streaming/sales, so I don't see why that should be scaled back in most cases.
"Gee, that's really persuasive. Do you have any actual points to make other than to essentially say 'me Tarzan, physical bad, digital good'?"
I dunno about celebrities, if the money spent on them is reasonable then isn't really just marketing like when a movie hires The Rock or Chris Pratt to be the lead as it's not for their acting chops but their star name on the poster. As an example to show the maths if Ed Sheeran (who is rubbish busker with a loop pedal btw) has 70+ million listeners on Spotify so if just 1% of those listeners buy the game that is 700k extra copies sold and in most cases that is enough to earn back the budget of the typical game plus the celeb fees.
It's certainly the case in film and television, that getting celebrities attached to your project tends to lead to a bigger budget. Casting no-names in big roles generally leaves you with less money to spend on other things, because the amount you have to start with goes down with it.
Video games aren't really there yet though, and there are bigger factors at play than just star power. It doesn't help that a large proportion of movie spinoffs games are basically shovelware.
Let's call the push for great graphics what it is, a giant d*ck measuring contest by all the major publishers and devs. Since the PS4 we've hit the era of diminishing returns and really it gets harder and harder to be impressed with amazing graphics. You want your games to look good? A good art direction gets the job done
Also there's nothing wrong with smaller games, not every game needs to be a huge, expansive worlds to explore with literal Hollywood level stories and voice acting. Having something smaller scale is perfectly fine
Lastly, it seems this isn't as much of a problem as it was in the 7th gen, but not every game needs online multiplayer
Dialing it back on 1, 2 and 8 alone would do wonders. If I had to pick two more, probably 7 and 9.
Honestly, these companies that put out nothing but AAA or mostly AAA games need to learn to moderate their budgets. That's why I like Nintendo's approach; they have their massive budget games like Zelda, 3D Mario, Smash Bros. etc. but they also have plenty of AA games. Not having every single game you release being a AAA game helps make your actual AAA titles feel more special too.
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Topic: Budgets of AAA games are too expensive. What would you remove to get the cost down?
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