I agree, but my point was that cost isn’t a sufficient explanation.

I think I particularly agree with @megopie@beehaw.org: one reason we see photo-realism instead of more stylised graphics is that it is more generic, and thus less dependent on a specific team.

The more artistic/creative your work, the less interchangeable your workers are.

But you could also make the same argument about graphical fidelity, which has been pushed further and further for decades, greatly swelling the cost of production