I have to disagree with the statement no on is pushing PC-only experiences. Epic is pushing UnrealEngine4 as potentially PC-only unless the console makers step up.
Then there's Arma 3 just around the corner.
From my point of view, as a PC gamer, the reason there's not so much investment in using the PC graphics capability we have cheaply available right now is because of the influence of the console market. Most big budget games right now are made for the current crop of consoles which PCs outpaced years ago. Too many times the PC version is just the 360 version with UI changes to support the mouse and keyboard. You can look at the graphics mods that are being made for games such as Skyrim and GTA4 to see the wasted potential.
Also, it's really, really expensive (as you point out) to make a game that truly pushes the capabilities we have right now and very few developers are willing to do that, it's a huge risk. Part of UnrealEngine4's development are attempts to address this by providing tools to help reduce the time necessary with the creation process.
But not all games need high graphic fidelity, that's not the whole story. The true waste is the pure amount of cheap computational power we have available with both the GPU and CPU that's being wasted. Screw photo-realism, I want more physics and AI.
The tools are there now. You can make an outstandingly impressive looking game with UnrealEngine3 right now if you ignore restraints of mainstream PC and console hardware. Look at the Nvidia and AMD tech demos for their cards to see what they can do.
But that game would be expensive, time consuming, and not worth the investment if you were planning on making money.
I would say it's better to describe it that they are waiting on tools that allow them to do more with the same time and money budgets on current or next-gen hardware. That's where things like UnrealEngine4 make it interesting because it seems that Epic is saying that PCs are under-utilized graphical work horses now and don't want to wait for the consoles to catch up. It's potentially a huge risk for them to take and it'll be fun to see how it plays out.
To me the tools thing isn't just about graphics, it's about development. Proper tools make high quality games cheaper to make in general. As an example, let's say you want to make a big open world game that has hundreds of indoor locations. You have a team of ten to create those indoor locations. If you can use tools that would allow a team of five people to do the same amount of work in the same amount of time as ten on the previous project then you have two choices. You can reduce your team to five to make the same amount of content for lower costs (and probably being better) or you can keep your ten to create more content for the same costs as before.
If you look at the UnrealEngine4 demos they are just as much about content creation tools as it is about graphics in general.
Then there's Arma 3 just around the corner.
From my point of view, as a PC gamer, the reason there's not so much investment in using the PC graphics capability we have cheaply available right now is because of the influence of the console market. Most big budget games right now are made for the current crop of consoles which PCs outpaced years ago. Too many times the PC version is just the 360 version with UI changes to support the mouse and keyboard. You can look at the graphics mods that are being made for games such as Skyrim and GTA4 to see the wasted potential.
Also, it's really, really expensive (as you point out) to make a game that truly pushes the capabilities we have right now and very few developers are willing to do that, it's a huge risk. Part of UnrealEngine4's development are attempts to address this by providing tools to help reduce the time necessary with the creation process.
But not all games need high graphic fidelity, that's not the whole story. The true waste is the pure amount of cheap computational power we have available with both the GPU and CPU that's being wasted. Screw photo-realism, I want more physics and AI.