What would show the power of PS5 would be the PS5 version not the absence of PS4 version, actually having both can work to show how much better the PS5 version is. And considering the assets and engines are almost the same of what was on PS4 there is little reason not to. It is a different situation than H2FW or GT7. At least that is my feel after seeing the trailer (that when show I didn't even see it much better than the PS4 version, but then side by side I saw the big jump).

I really couldn't see much from that trailer to be honest. But if its not on ps4, I'm sure it will do stuff that wouldn't be possible on current gen. If they made it a cross gen title, it would have limit the ambitions just like any other cross-gen title. Sony, on the other hand, really wants to show off their new hardware, even if it ends up as a glorified tech demo. 

No it isnt the Switch port its the pc version running Lower then Low settings (Using a few ini tweaks) to show you that the same game can scale down to looking more then a gen apart without a massive team once the engine is already made to be scaled. It can also go beyond ultra settings too with some ini tweaks and a few texture mods it can look like an early next gen game.

Its ironic you talking about chery picked photos when thats all you do in every thread. Find photos with the smallest difference and claim they prove the is no difference and call it a day. My pics clearly show the can be a massive difference bigger then the ones between anything you showed from infamous from PS3 to PS4.

It isn't about how graphics can scale its about parity and hitting performance targets on all platforms. Who would buy Witcher 3 and play it at lower than the lowest settings? It's why pc games have minimum requirements in the first place. Sure you can still play them with even lower than the minimum requirements, but then you will spending money on a game that runs way below the quality norm that the developer was aiming for.

Sure, they could push Series X to the max with Halo Infinite while targeting 30fps/1440p. No doubt it would look spectacular and the engine can easily do that. But why would they if they also want to sell the Xone and pc versions? You keep forgetting that the core game has to look and play identical on all platforms and hit 1080p and a steady 30fps on Xone.

Not really a business decision doesn't necessarily be based on a technical limitation. They may just decide to cut of PS4 version even if feasible just to entice more people to buy the newer console while sacrificing some sales of the SW they would have on PS4. Nothing on the trailer seemed to not be possible to dial down.

.ini tweaks are just a list of options tweakable by a game, often when you change something in a games UI interface, it changes the corresponding .ini file trigger.
And often a games UI settings do not expose those extra options in the .ini file.

And sometimes a game has a command line interface where you can take things even further, such as idtech, CryEngine and Source.

There is actually a sub-group of PC gamers who try to run games on hardware that is below minimum requirements, it's actually a big community.

The entire Oldblivion project (Something I was a part of) was essentially an approach of rewriting The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion shaders in order to be compatible with Shader Model 1.0. - Perfect for a Geforce 3, which is a similar GPU found in the Original Xbox.

We also did a similar thing for Fallout 3.

And another team created "shadershock" which took a similar approach in order to run Bioshock on older shader models.

System requirements are a guideline in order for a developer to remove any "mud" from their hands legally if their game doesn't work on certain hardware sets, that is pretty much it. - In my 25 or more years of PC gaming, not once have I ever referred to a games system requirements.

Who says it has to look and play identical on all platforms?

Battlefield on 7th gen didn't. Multiplayer was very different on PC thanks to larger maps and player counts thanks to the larger amounts of CPU power and Ram... And it looked almost a generation ahead on PC.

Compare Minecraft RTX on PC to the 7th gen consoles, game looks very different, plays very different, the 7th gen consoles even had world size restrictions.

It usually takes a few years before "dialing things down" to slower hardware becomes impossible or extremely difficult, it takes time for developers to come to terms and leverage the various hardware nuances to the fullest extent of a console platform and build/upgrade their game engines to match, being exclusive or not doesn't really change that.

It does mean that if a prior entry to a game used lots of baked assets and the successor used lots of dynamic assets, then when doing a back-port to an older platform there will seem like there is a big regression in visuals compared to other games as the dynamic assets get turned off.

Case in point: Blacks Ops 3 and Dragon Age 3 on Xbox 360, games looked flat with lack of shadowing and lighting giving definition to scenes.

The Switch seems to be handling backports very well, mostly because it's hardware is very efficient for 720P and lower resolutions, mostly thanks to the efficiency of nVidia Maxwell and it's underlying technologies like tiled based rendering and delta colour compression.
Plus it's hardware features are a match and even exceed the Xbox One/Playstation 4 base consoles in a few areas thanks to being a more modern GPU, so for example the base Playstation 4 and Xbox One use shader model 5 and Switch uses shader model 6 for example... So back porting to the Switch is just easy, much easier than a 7th gen device with outdated and inefficient hardware feature sets.

It usually takes a few years before "dialing things down" to slower hardware becomes impossible or extremely difficult, it takes time for developers to come to terms and leverage the various hardware nuances to the fullest extent of a console platform and build/upgrade their game engines to match, being exclusive or not doesn't really change that.

It does mean that if a prior entry to a game used lots of baked assets and the successor used lots of dynamic assets, then when doing a back-port to an older platform there will seem like there is a big regression in visuals compared to other games as the dynamic assets get turned off.

Case in point: Blacks Ops 3 and Dragon Age 3 on Xbox 360, games looked flat with lack of shadowing and lighting giving definition to scenes.

The Switch seems to be handling backports very well, mostly because it's hardware is very efficient for 720P and lower resolutions, mostly thanks to the efficiency of nVidia Maxwell and it's underlying technologies like tiled based rendering and delta colour compression.
Plus it's hardware features are a match and even exceed the Xbox One/Playstation 4 base consoles in a few areas thanks to being a more modern GPU, so for example the base Playstation 4 and Xbox One use shader model 5 and Switch uses shader model 6 for example... So back porting to the Switch is just easy, much easier than a 7th gen device with outdated and inefficient hardware feature sets.

"The diversity of hardware choice in PC has not held back the highest fidelity PC games on the market. The highest fidelity PC games rival anything that anybody has ever seen in video games. So this idea that developers don't know how to build games, or game engines, or ecosystems, that work across a set of hardware... there's a proof point in PC that shows that's not the case."

https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-series-x-xbox-one-exclusives-held-back-meme-phil-spencer

I thought they already confirmed it won't be on ps4? It would be a bit stupid of Sony not to use Spider man to showcase the ps5's hardware as its such a big franchise. Then again Insomniac has been working on 2 launch titles at the same time, so who knows how much effort they'll put in the Spider Man game. Maybe it won't be a next gen masterclass but they did say this, though:

"We are also excited for the game to demonstrate the power of PlayStation 5 this holiday. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales will show off near-instant loading, ray-tracing, 3D audio and the DualSense controller. We’ve upgraded our characters with 4D scans and improved skin shading for more realistic looking characters and spline-based hair that moves far more naturally. Many of the city’s assets have also been updated to take advantage of the new console. As you experience Miles’s story, you’ll see, hear, and feel things in a whole new way, all thanks to PS5."

Pointing to PC as an example doesn't help his case. SSDs have been a thing on PC for gaming for quite some time. However, they haven't been leveraged properly because devs take 5400rpm mechanical drives into account. Also PC games in general have are pushed as far as they can because they've had to take the base XB1 and base PS4 into account. I don't get the logic of developing beastly hardware like the Series X only to have the base XB1 as an anchor to it's capabilities. The base XB1 has been struggling with current gen games. Sony is going for a clean break with their 1st Party games and this will give them the decided advantage over MS because they don't have to take last gen hardware into account at all. The strength of consoles is high optimization. MS muting that advantage. Developers were shaky on last gen with X1X, PS4 Pro, Base PS4, and Base XB1 games.

MS has said their will be no Series X exclusives for two years.