I've never seen a game that hasn't been hyped and people were complaining about after, no matter if it was good or bad game. Thats a general issue, people put expectations too high with hyped games. I also did not like that the claim was to make a perfect game, there are and will never be perfect games. So its rather what people expected, if they say "hot garbage", preferences can be very different.
Also that a company "cannot screw" is a bold statement, as every company can put either their focus on wrong path (even when trying to listen and put into game what the community wished for), or put their project into danger because of different situations.
But I agree that grafics are not everything. The games I enjoyed most did not all have the best grafics or were all AAA games and were not all hyped.