Fully agree.  The next big break through will be AI tools to bring costs down.  

As for graphical jumps, the biggest problem is it requires additional hardware to get a full benefit.  4k on a 32 inch TV doesn't do much, but means a lot on a 65 inch.  Ultra lighting on a standard LCD is meh, but on OLED it is glorious, same with shadows.  120 fps doesn't mean anything on a 60 hz TV, but is amazing on a 120 hz set.  I personally thought upgrading from LCD to OLED was (by itself) bigger than going from ps4 to ps4 pro.

Some games benefit from high end graphics like hogwarts and horizon.  Some don't need it like cocoon or triangle.

Prettiest game, imho, is still WWHD.  

AI if it's allowed to develop will probably just eventually destroy high end hardware period (consoles, PCs). Because it will completely change how games are rendered period and won't require polygons, textures, lighting, etc. any of that. It will just be fed a data set of enough reference photos and video that it will from that create photorealistic worlds/characters at dramatically less power overhead, so you'll have photorealistic visuals on a smartphone, even probably eventually displays (like smart TVs) built in. And people will then take that for granted. This discussion gets it:

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/after-sora-by-openai-aaa-games-by-ai-are-months-away.1667354/page-5#post-268975419

From the user side it will blur the line between what is "official" content released by actual companies, if there are AI tools that dramatically streamline the difficulty process of making games and allows a handful of people to do it (eventually just one person), you're going to have a flood of people sitting around making their own 3D version of A Link to the Past, making their own Smash Bros characters, making their own Elden Ring game, making GoldenEye 007 with photorealistic graphics and all the Bond actors, etc. etc. with visuals that are basically the same as the real version, even mimicking the physics and all that.

I think you're going to have a monstrous side market of games that look and play like official game content because of AI assistance on the development side, but it'll be created by users and hobbyists and "side hustle" content creators instead. 

There's no money in Tiktok, Youtube, Instagram Reels just being confined to traditional movie studios and television production companies, obviously the money is giving it out to the general public and letting them create their own content and share it. That will happen with AI games too, you're going to have teenagers flooding the market with multiple games running on a photo-real engine every month, hoping one of them becomes a viral hit, the same way today people make videos hoping one in a million of them go viral.

The less live service games, the more preservation it gets