Mario Kart 8 Is Outselling Mario Kart World Now

Both of these things are ostensibly untrue if your goal is to turn a profit with your game. There are 40 new games released to steam every day. It isn't necessary to have polished graphics to have a wildly successful launch, but it helps tremendously.

The biggest problem I see with graphics in indie titles is lack of regard for the lighting system. The "unity look" is simply a consequence of developers being unaware of (or disinterested in) basic camera/environment settings and the benefits of non-realtime lighting modes.

Baking lights should never require a 30 minute oven session unless you are scratching at AAA scene complexity or using a machine from 2013. This stuff typically finishes in seconds with GPU light mappers now. You can see the global illumination update effectively live in the scene editor if you manage your texel budget conservatively.

Having this kind of lighting system can make any scene look absolutely incredible, even using low poly meshes and lower res textures. It doesn't take an army of artists to make a game look good when you can lean on physically accurate lighting and material systems. It used to be a full time job to fake all of that stuff. Now we can do it for approximately free. The fact that most don't utilize these tools is a big competitive edge for someone who is willing to spend the extra 50-100 hours it takes to learn these systems.