Yeah you're definitely right that there is still incentive to make games performant and accessible, AND that performance still often gets overlooked at launch and patched up post release (capcom and ubisoft you lil bitches), but I think the hard line of a necessary benchmark for consoles forces optimization to be worked on throughout development and helps indie devs manage their scope from the start as well as level the playing field a bit.
But all of this kind of misses the forest for the trees in that no game is going to be made more fun by loosening hardware restrictions.