I probably don't have to tell you that there's tons of people out there who want the exact opposite, right?
Besides, I'd argue that it's not so much graphics that bog down framerates nowadays - it's things like physics, complex artificial intelligence, etc. When I see a framerate in a game grind to a halt nowadays it's rarely because there's too much on screen - it's more because of the internals of what is happening on that screen.
You see it all the time. A game will show you a thousand static objects and the framerate is fine, but once it starts treating them as physics objects or gives them AI, the framerate goes to shit because calculating all of that data is too much for the system to handle - but the game is still well within the abilities of the GPU.
Hence my initial comment of "cutting gameplay features".
And while that takes us back to the samurai screenshot again with its 65,000 soldiers or whatever, I'm willing to bet that their AI is ridiculously simple.
It certainly doesn't look very fun.