Products in the game space heavily differentiate from one another by "showing more" data (textures, models, detail, etc) or "doing more" with data - (massively multiplayer, more physics, ai, sound) or "doing it faster" - (more fps, low latency, etc)

Local compute resources are finite, and if you want to target the widest market, then you need to fully utilize mainstream hardware; which means anyone willing to do the grunt work benefits from a higher quality product.