Videogames as art... finally?

Looking around for interesting video for the Wii, I stumbled upon this game, Endless Ocean.



According to IGN

Endless Ocean challenges gamers to explore a vast underwater region, scuba-diving through locales and interacting with aquatic life. Players will also be able to snap photos.

By the looks of it, this is a game made to simply be pretty - but I think it is a mistake to confuse this as a slightly interactive version of those fish-tank screensavers we all used to have. I think this represents some fairly intelligent marketing and production efforts from Nintendo, because it fits into the category of games that I would play for, say, 10 minutes a day as a mental break from my other work. When I want to just kind of space out for a few, Gears Of War is definetly not the answer.

I think this is a strong indication that the game industry is approaching the Richard Serra defintion of art - that of art existing to be without function, having only aesthetic value. Certainly, it seems Endless Ocean removes much of the "doing" that videogames are usually centered around and replaces it with purely aesthetic form.