This is a point that I made earlier. The way engines are designed these days, you can optimize for every platform you develop for without harming the development of another.
Sure, but optimization is rarely the issue here.
The issue is the fidelity of the simulation, art assets and the technology used to produce both. I don't care about getting 3% more perofrmance because the game is "optimized" vs "unoptimised", I care about getting lumped with shitty 512x512 textures when our PCs can handle up to 4096x4096
The issue stems from hardware disparity, at the launch of a console the difference is small but after only a few years the PC is way ahead in the lead and accelerating at an exponential rate to the point that in the 7-8 year life span they end up 20x more powerful, or more.
Having 1 engine run on all platforms encourages developers to save money and simply write 1 game for all platforms, but then the PC inherits the constraints of a console because the games are written to fit inside the tight constraints of console hardware.
It's precisely why I said that multi-platform engines and multi-platform development was the CAUSE of the issue, and not the solution.
The older ports have a greater chance of being more tailored for the PC. I'll give you an example. Say devs port parts of the engine from a console game to the PC, and they have to re-factor the aiming code...are they going to write the same console system for the PC that's based off the assumption of using analogue sticks? No probably not. They're going to say "while we have to re-write this code we might as well write it based off the asumption they're using a mouse".
It was only since the invention of multi-platform engines that we saw the really fucking anoying trend of having mouse acceleration in games, quite often FORCED on with no way to disable it. This was never an issue in the past (outside of windows OS applying acceleration) but because console games need heavy acceleration due to analogue sticks as a control method the PC gets the same thing, despite it causing a headache or near unplayable games for a large number of PC gamers.
And turning off acceleration is SIMPLE, it's not even hard coded into the engine most of the time, it's an option, because to add acceleration first you need to read the input in a raw format anyway, so you have to go out of your way and write additional code to add acceleration.
This all points to one very grave conclusion, the easier it is you make it to write the game for multiple platforms in parallel, the more features they'll share, AND WE DON'T WANT THAT, we don't want to share console features because they're crap, unnecessary and more often than not actually detrimental to gameplay.
(and as a side note I find it deeply amusing that modern games sometimes add a "use raw mouse input" option in the menu, we've gone from using raw input as default, to forcing acceleration on us, and fixing the problem is allowing us to untick that option, rather than it simply being off by default and an option to enable mouse acceleration, this speaks PERFECTLY to how the entire situation has been flipped)
But not if the PC is the lead platform. If the PC is the lead platform, then all assets will be designed primarily for the PC, and then scaled down for the consoles.
There's no incentive to develop primarily for the Xbox 360 and PS3 anymore, because doing so would reduce the increase in graphical fidelity, immersion and seamlessness that gamers are EXPECTING to find when gaming on their new PS4 and Xbox One compared to the previous generation of consoles..
For example, it's already been confirmed that the PS4 version of Watch Dogs will have physics effects, weather effects and higher population density that won't be found on the Xbox 360 or PS3.
So the solution is, develop for PC first, then down scale accordingly.
It's a nice idea and when multi-platform started to become popular I was very vocal about encouraging developers to do this, but after years of repeatedly asking for it, I gave up.
As it stands the mentality is that they target the biggest platform for primary developmet, they make a highly tailored game for that platform and net the biggest percentage of users there, after that whether or not the PC gamers are angry because they have forced mouse acceleration and 25 degree FOVs, well who cares? It's a fraction of the install base and whoever they lose on the PC side of things they'll probably gain ten fold by focusing those resources on making their console version super tailored for consoles.
Also there's the added problem that some things just don't scale well, some things scale VERY well, textures for example. Make an 8kx8k source texture, saving 4k by 4k variants for PC and 1kx1k variants for consoles takes 3 seconds.
But down-scaling something important to game play, for example aspects of the AI, or the core game logic, the non-graphical physics etc...these things scale badly. We can't scale AI and keep the same fundamental game in tact like we can textures. It's harder to scale geometry down without heavily relying on dynamic geometry like tessellation.
Like PrincessFrosty said, all the new major 3D engines are inherently designed to be scalable for different platforms, so porting isn't really the issue.
The issue is sharing game assets between platforms. And that's where things are changing, because with the release of the new generation of consoles, developers no longer have a financial incentive to develop for the lowest common denominator first.
It now makes better financial sense to develop from the top down, which means the PC will be the lead platform.
Can you imagine the flak they would get if they used the same textures, models, map sizes, AI routines etcetera in the PS4 or Xbox One titles that they used in the Xbox 360 and PS3?
You're exactly right, when it comes to graphical fidelity sharing art assets is a huge problem.
But this is a cyclical problem because PC hardware evolves quickly in lots of small steps, where as consoles stagnate for 7-8 years. The new release of consoles will quickly dwarf the old ones, we'll see pretty fast abandonment of the old consoles in favour of the new ones, and the new consoles likely having a huge install base will simply become the primary development platform instead.
I really, REALLY genuinely hope we eventually see a move towards the PC being the primary development platform and everything else being a spin off, neutered to the appropriate level.
But I don't realistically expect this to happen, there's too many factors working against this model, some of which I've not even touched on here.
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