Having high-end hardware isn't a problem by itself, and I see no issue with asking for it.
It is; once people pay a hefty premium price just to get a high-end hardware, then they expect their games to utilize that hardware, or else they would feel like they are getting a low quality game and the money they paid for the hardware has been useless.
If you want to know what is going to happen with gaming in the future, you can just look at the PC, it already crashed and revived and the market and the actual content creators are much better off for it.
PC and consoles are not comparable at all.
Unlike consoles, PCs comes in a huge variety, while people are stuck with their consoles for usually a generation. The best selling PC games by far require a very modest hardware to run adequately: StarCraft 2, WoW, LoL, DotA2, Diablo 3, etc.
There will always be a place for very high end games though, and plenty of developers are skilled enough in those areas to keep it safely rolling for themselves, which is why having that expensive do-everything hardware is fine to have.
On PC, there have always been such demand for technologically very high end games.
However,
1. The PC crowd had people who were willing to pay for high end hardware, but it wasn't like everyone had/wanted to do the same.
2. On PC, most genres didn't require a high end hardware, because their target demographic didn't require one to begin with
3. On PC, high end hardware was also used to deliver very high IQ in terms of fps, AA, resolution, etc. which didn't incur any extra cost on the development.
The main problem with high end Console, is that you can't choose to get only part of the advancement, but have to pay for all of it.
From last gen to this, there was many other advances beside graphics jump: significant online improvement, digital distribution, AI advancement, wireless and improved controllers, cheap storage, revamped OS, etc.
You can get a lot of these on the PC without the need to change your hardware much; or at least through the normal pace you change your PC.
The difference is that Nintendo basically knows how to exploit its fanbase for maximum profit to fund their less successful games. We may joke about Nintendo putting a SNES ROM on a Wii disk and selling it for $30, but said SNES ROM Port sold two million copies.
It's not exploitation, it is the value of their intellectual property; 2D Mario games still are very good games, probably better than most 2D platformers released nowadays. It's not like you can get movies released in 1950s for $0.99