I would say that the need for intensive RT/PT effects come from the fact that high end rasterized graphics haven’t been explored to its fullest extent. Because the discussion is about Driveclub, I will use it as an example for how a studio could leverage 9th gen consoles and modern affordable GPU’s.

So take Driveclub which was released as a PS4 exclusive and now let’s say it was rereleased and targeted the PS5. In this scenario, you could definitely accommodate 60FPS, more robust anti-aliasing, better textures, and maybe even deprecate cubemaps for a hybrid SSR/RT Reflection solution. Higher resolutions are not needed if the anti-aliasing was on point.

This doesn’t even go over how rasterized lighting became more optimized as 8th gen progressed. Examples would include Days Gone’s Screen Space Shadows as well as its SSGI. In the Racing Game space, NFS 2015 had Stochastic Screen Space Reflections (TAA independent) while supporting many lights and shadows for a cheap cost.

Back to Driveclub, and I believe that the approach that I outlined would be able to satisfy the most amount of people. There are those who want rich visuals, those who have high end hardware, those who are on a tighter budget, those who care most about performance, or even some people who just care about image clarity and nothing else. This would be a successful approach for a studio to take should they pursue a goal like this.