"It may well be that PC gaming producers have gotten «lazy», as they are working with a ever improving platform. Thus they can target «future» hardware rather t

"It may well be that PC gaming producers have gotten «lazy», as they are working with a ever improving platform. Thus they can target «future» hardware rather than attempt to optimize and push what they already have." It's not that. There is a lot of optimization going in there and often the reference target is actually the common denominator of mainstream game consoles (lower than what each of them individually-taken have). Only on top of that there are optionally-added (and activated by-default, out of marketing reasons) layers that attempt to use more resources and which gives you your stated impression. And yes, it's true what you say about "the end of a platform generation" because the optimization efforts (including platform-specific ones) are stacked trough time.