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PC Gaming 'a Generation Ahead' of Consoles, Says Crytek Boss
Crytek co-founder Cevat Yerli spoke recently about the growing gap between modern PCs and consoles like the PS3 and Xbox 360, saying that the desire to develop for multiple platforms is hampering creative expression. "PC is easily a generation ahead right now. With 360 and PS3, we believe the quality of the games beyond Crysis 2 and other CryEngine developments will be pretty much limited to what their creative expressions is, what the content is. You won't be able to squeeze more juice from these rocks." One reason this trend persists is because of the perception that PC game sales are not high enough for most developers to focus on that platform. Rock, Paper, Shotgun says this indicates a need for the disclosure of digital distribution sales numbers, which could dispel that myth. Yerli's comments come alongside news of Crytek's announcement of a new military-based shooter called Warface.
I invite you to look at Shadow of the Colossus. HDR, fur shader, fairy shader, DoF, very nice looking motion blur, IK, and much more flashy effects, on a 200Mhz MIPS machine with 32MB of ram, complete with data streaming. That, and the game is considered to a goddam piece of art if there was ever a game that was worthy of calling art.
That's a recent thing and is OPs point. You most certainly couldn't certain play games on a 3 year old system back in the mid-late 90's for example.
eg. Unreal 1 was released 22nd May 1998. It required a 166Mhz CPU at minimum. Less than 3 years before that the top of the line CPU would have been the Pentium 120 (released 27th May 1995). So you could have bought a top of the line CPU and in less than 3 years it'd be below minimum requirements for the newest games. That sort of thing was normal in that era. It doesn't happen today though.