The advantage of consoles is mainly for CPU, and may be even larger if there is a strong draw call limit.
No. Consoles literally have timings down to the ms which are hardware specifications. All models of the PS3, for example, are exacting for that matter. They actually had to downgrade more modern PS3 models to assure that the timing was exact. We're talking about making sure each and every call takes the same amount of time. So on PS4 and future variants, you will expect (with perhaps some negligible variation) 1:1 call. This allows programmers to go way out of their way to write extremely tight code. ND is infamous for that.
But stating that you'd need a much better GPU to be equal to a PS4 is not true.
Depends on the engine. If an engine is specifically targeting a chipset and general hardware configuration, you're correct. If it's generalized, no, you will lose a lot of performance if you're coding generally.
That said, as the hardware becomes more advanced this matters less and less so a PS5 can probably emulate a PS4 with ease. Likewise, a PC equivalent or better, with the same kind of engine, will perform nicely.
In the end I don't disagree that ND's engine, on PC, would perform just as well if not better on a higher spec'd machine. I'm simply saying coders for PC aren't going to go out of their way to make enhancements that suit one PC configuration over the other. Basically, I don't think anyone is making that effort, yet. As you say, "openGL multidraw indirect / Mantle/Metal/DirectX 12" changes that. For now, for possibly a very short now, it's not the case.
This is one reason I think the PS4 lifecycle is 5-6 years at best.
Apartment waiting with Ellie for Tes