I mean this is what happens, game engines evolve to take advantage of the latest technology. A GTX 660 with 2-4GB of VRAM from a decade ago can't run the latest games.
I mean yes and no. In the past, hardware was limited, so they
had to optimize. As hardware has gotten better, the top in companies have told the bottom to ignore it as it "wastes" money and time. In the past, they usually made stuff way better than any game could handle at all, and then downscale it, only using the top stuff for pre-rendered cutscenes. Not to mention adding cool "hacks" to make it run better. But even as tech evolved, and engines grew hungrier, they still tried to take as much performance out of the game as they could. It's very new that they are straight up ignoring optimization, like right now. (Not sure when it started to get really bad, but I think UE5 kicked off that both big companies and indies just use the stuff that remove steps in dev.)
Now stuff is going towards being the same for the cutscene and the game when it does not need to, and not bothering with optimization much or at all. When the common denominator in PCs is maybe a 4070 with 12GB of VRAM (most people are running a 3060 or 4060 or even older hardware right now) or better, then maybe they can start to just throw nanites on it without much thought. But right now, you need to optimize for a while still. I would say ignoring devs not doing their job properly with optimization, that we are still at least 2-4 years with 8GB VRAM being the norm. After that I think people will have gotten a new card that is at least 12GB and decent power will start to be more normal.
VRAM mostly (in games at least) does not need much. If you run HD(1080p)-2K, you do not need more than 8GB; it's when you go above that that we get into higher demands. And most do not run more than a 2K monitor, maybe the people that game on TV, but that is often consoles and not PC. And even then, 2K textures still look fine on 4K, so it's not like you need 4-8K textures and a gazillion polygons for the models to look good. And while there are more that affect VRAM usage, those things usually do not do much unless its code is written worse than what I can do while sleeping.
Effects and other crap usually only affect like 1GB, it's the new stuff like ray-tracing, nanite, 4K/8K textures, and bad optimizing that eat performance. And while I am in the camp that those new features are good and cool, they still have to be optimized around and not just run wild. And even if nanites are cool and make making games easier, if only owners of 80 or 90 class cards can run games with them with good performance, it's not something that should be put into games yet, as they are a minority. At least have a toggle for the features that are cutting edge, not just force people to have them on due to bad dev. (often due to the top branch forcing a rushed job)
