I can say this, the last games I truly enjoyed playing was Zelda Wind Waker and Ico (short but good). Assassin's Creed was beautiful but fell short especially at the end (collected those flags for pretty much no reason). FFX was good, FFX2 was playing an interactive girl band music video.

Innovation is risky, and they're in it to make $$ so yes the suits have the say and there isn't a healthy balance of business/art. Sadly it seems like they're making games thinking the consumer is an idiot or will just run away from anything that's different than the usual format.

I don't think online games have bad visuals, especially when you look at Guild Wars, Lineage II, World of Warcraft etc. You want appeal to a broad audience, everybody doesn't have high end PCs and fast connections so I don't expect the majority of online games to look like Crysis soon, you'll be playing on dead servers.