This might hold true if you're only looking at the actual design/code side of the lifecycle, but it sounds like a key point of the new APIs is to make new projects more testable, debuggable and optimizable. Given most project spend inordinate amounts of time in the those three activities (and it sounds like games moreso), this should be a win for everyone.

And even if it isn't, the video game industry just got revolutionized by most of the major engines becoming free, so indie devs don't have to drop down to a lower level of abstraction in order to have a chance at competitive performance.

Can we please stop calling Unity/Unreal "free"? Unity still sells a Pro version, and Unreal takes a cut of revenue after a certain amount of $ earned. I'm not arguing against either model, and it's GREAT for hobbyists, but these engines still cost professional studios money.

The salient point is the barrier to entry. The fact that they still have some form of revenue related to the engines doesn't elevate the up-front cost any and the royalties (where they exist) are structured in a way that cannot prevent them from being a viable option for indie studios. The engines will be making the benefits of new graphics APIs properly accessible to indie studios in all the ways that matter; it won't be a AAA-exclusive thing.

(And professional studios don't have to license the ancillary tools and services and source code access of the Pro editions in order to ship a game.)

It is already integrated into Source 2, Unity started (they also have Metal support) and Epic also going that way.

It will make it to indie engines that aren't companies funded as well eventually.

This actually gives a ton of power to current engine developers in the market so getting them involved was a big win.

I am a huge fan of OpenGL ES / WebGL (also based on OES) and was happy that we finally had mobile win that battle but with new graphics rendering layers like Metal and optimization for mobile more needs to be done. The driver mess is a big problem and limits innovation as well.

With all the free engines available these days, the situation for indies has never really been better.