Don't think it helps indies that much though, People already complain if you don't have more than normal and specular maps with stencil shadows and still want all the bells and whistles.
Well there's two types of "graphics" - there's graphics technology (the specular, the shadows, etc.), and there's artistic style.
People want a fun and nice looking game - they don't really care about what fancy technology may or may not be "under the hood". Of course the more advanced your technology, the more artistic freedom you usually have, but the point is that the end users don't really care.
If someone's complaining that your game doesn't have normal mapping or stencil shadows, it's most likely because something in the game just looks bad and they think they know how to fix it. Throwing in normal maps and stencil shadows may patch up the look a little bit, but it's not solving the root of the problem: bad art direction.
I'm saying that the move away from hyper-realism helps independent developers because it makes it easier to compete in the "mainstream" PC game market.
I'm not saying you should avoid developing advanced technology, but instead the new focus on gameplay and maybe "nice looking" games rather than "super-realistic looking" games is good news for both players and developers.
To illustrate my point, take a look at these two screenshots:
Now, which looks more realistic? Crysis, of course. But which looks better? I don't know about you, but I think even though the first one (Battlefield Heroes) doesn't look as realistic, it looks just about as nice to me, if not better (in a different way of course). Now, if the realistic game requires a $3000 gaming PC to run comfortably, while the cartoon style game will already run on your current computer, which do you think sounds more appealing? This, I think, explains the change of direction in PC gaming. Yeah, computers are getting faster and faster, and cheaper and cheaper, but games requirements are going up faster than affordable hardware can keep up.
Now regarding the indie argument, think about this: Which of the above games would you rather try to develop, as an independent game developer? Which do you think you would be most likely to succeed with?