I'm not sure how I feel about someone saying that when people look at 2d graphics they are instantly turned off. Is that really true nowadays? Does the glory of 3d make all 2d games look boring?
To an extent I think it is, the problem now is that even if you do pixel art well the game looks dated, and the frank truth is that most indi developers can't do pixel art well - it always was a specialised skill only now people who can do it are very hard to find.
On top of that, but traditional game genres that lend themselves to pixel art like platformers and the traditional 'zap the aliens' type scrollers are in themselves hugely dated outside of the mobile telephone and flash games arena.
On the other hand puzzle games remain the stable of shareware indi developers, and these are prime candidates for pixel art still.
As I said earlier, I think there is still a place for pixel art, but doing it well for anything other than a retro remake is extremely difficult.