So he says that games are becoming more realistic in most aspects, but not in the lighting. That is probably true, but there is no reason why that should cause

So he says that games are becoming more realistic in most aspects, but not in the lighting. That is probably true, but there is no reason why that should cause the game to become grey and washed-out. Most CG movies and effects (from Pixar, Dreamworks, ILM, ...) also do not have anything close to photorealistic lighting (i.e. correct global illumination), but they do not look grey. One common mistake that leads to washed-out images is to apply gamma correction (which is the right thing to do) but not apply inverse gamma correction to your textures. That way your surfaces are essentially gamma-corrected twice, which is clearly wrong. I don't know if they're really making such a simple mistake, but who knows...