Powerful hardware can help innovate in areas other than pretty graphics, but they're not taking those risks, and I'm pointing out that powerful hardware is mostly on the GPU side, but it doesn't have to be that way. Games could take advantage of powerful CPUs, but at the moment you just need a powerful GPU for the most part. CPUs would be needed for game logic and mechanics, but since there isn't a ton of innovation in that area then it hasn't been a requirement for games. At the same time GPUs could be leveraged for things other than graphics like AI based animations to allow for generative animations, etc.