I and many many others would say graphics are one of the key aspects, if not the key aspect, of the gameplay experience, particularly for 'simulator' style games. If it wasn't we would never have moved beyond the PS1, but we have.
You list said trailers and screenshots. Not graphics. Not gameplay. Graphics can enhance gameplay, more or less so depending on the genre, but they're not key. There's plenty of games out there with mediocre graphics (intentionally so or not) that are great experiences.
You were largely talking about marketing, and good marketing does not a good game make.
And going back to the FIFA example, official accreditation for a game, or any product for that matter, has strong connotations to the customer about what they can expect from said product, so in terms of game sales it certainly will make at least some difference.
Reading anything into the quality of a game from it's accreditation by a real world sanctioning body would be a mistake on the part of the consumer, but you're correct that people do tend to do it.
However, basing your sales on people misinterpreting the marketing material doesn't seem like a brilliant strategy. I'd say actually being a quality product would be more valuable in the long term than implying quality through association.
And 'good game' is a subjective thing so that doesn't come into it. I take it from your use of the term that you don't think GT Sport is or will be a good game, however the only opinion that matters to casual players will be that of the reviewers, not yours or mine.
Being a good game comes into it exactly because it's subjective. Each individual wants something that is to them a "good game", or at least that's what I believe. What that means may be different for each, but developers absolutely try to design their games to appeal to as broad a market as they can so that more people would think "hmm, sounds interesting" before purchase and "damn, I'm glad I bought that" after purchase.
As far as what GTS will be, from what I've seen so far I'm not hopeful about it's chances. It seems like a very well produced but very limited game in a very niche space, with a non-trivial amount of competition from games which on paper are at least viable rivals.
None of us know what GTS
is, because it's not a finished game yet.
As far as reviews mattering, reviewers tend to rank niche games lower simply because they're niche. iRacing is the best online sim racing experience bar none and has been for years. It's only in the last couple of years that there's even been games that moderately compete in the space.
iRacing on Metacritic has a 79.
Regardless of how good an iRacing style game is, it's largely impossible for it to score in the 90s simply because the market for such a game is so limited. Reviewers take that into account.
So it will be more difficult to know the numbers. It is same for every game but most people will definitely download the timed demo and probably end of purchasing the digital version.
