Sure, but there was a new generation of consoles in the meantime. The example I gave of Shader Model 3.0 had to do with the same thing, new consoles appeared.
The real culprit here was the chip shortage, cryptocurrency bubble bursting, rising inflation, and overall instability throughout the world (deteriorating China and US relations, for example).
All in all, it's just how things have always worked out, with the exception of external factors that had unforseen consequences.
I'm sure Remedy put on a ton of work, and is trying to raise the bar in graphical fidelity. Decisions like these had to be done early in the game dev stage, since all the game assets would've taken it into account.
At the end of the day, gimping progress in real time CG for the sake of compatibility with a 7 year old card makes no sense.
