I think allot of developers got allot out of the Xbox One and Playstation 4 very quickly... Most game engines like Unreal Engine were extremely well optimized for the consoles out of the gate so developers could get allot out of the platforms.. Helped by the fact that consoles are now based on commodity PC hardware and are not really custom designs that require allot of learning.
And remember... We did go from 720P during the 7th gen, with static lighting and effects to approaching 1080P with full dynamic effects, if you fire up the old PS3/Xbox 360 on a large modern OLED 4k display, you quickly see how poorly those games have aged on their native platforms... All that extra clarity and dynamic effects does cost.
We have reached a point where development environments don't actually change on a generation per generation basis anymore, because the consoles are piggy-backing off PC technology and development at every single step, so optimized results happen very quickly.
Art likely plays a larger role in the visual makeup of a games visuals these days rather than the pure suite of effects bombarding the retina's... Take Halo Infinite for example, it isn't a visual showstopper... But inside some of those forerunner structures, the Art looks absolutely stunning with some of the texture/lighting detailing being employed there.
But give it a another year and we will see a similar jump like what we saw at the start of the 8th gen.. We are getting a taste now with things like the Matrix tech demo.
--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--
