Sure, but up until recently new games still looked and ran kinda decent on mid-tier off the shelf hardware

Starfield, just as any new triple a title (excluding bg3), is just another proof how incompetent, greedy and fucked up big game studios have become.

I'm sorry but i don't think starfield looks nearly as good as it demands performance. And to get acceptable performance with current hardware, you have to crank down the quality so far that it looks shit again.

This isn't "pushing the boundaries". This is simply "not understanding what the market wants".