It's not a trend. Making money has been something that people like to do since the dawn of currency in society. That's not going anywhere.
Right now the reality of the matter is that releasing a complete product on the 360 alone is more profitable than doing so on the PC alone.
I agree, I wish it had some better gfx at times. You know what though, the game's art and general design is ******* beautiful. If you stare at a spot you'll notice the low res textures soon enough, but if you move slowly through the world you'll soon forget specific textures and take everything in as a whole.
Not saying I disagree with you, but I understand these companies need to make money as well. Without money we don't get any new fun things to do.
I personally love the direction that Beth is going with their games now. Skyrim is leaps and bounds ahead of the past iterations of their vision. I can't wait to see the next game.
You're right, and thus my point about the 'trends'. The trend, as you eloquently stated, is that making money by releasing an inferior product outweighs the advantages of pushing the boundaries and releasing a superior product.
As I said, the game IS amazing, however, in my opinion this game could have been released absolutely stunningly mindblowing with some high res graphics that probably wouldnt of even taken that much time given the resources available at Beth.