Graphics power (small, but enough) is becoming low-end! Soon developers will see the ENORMOUS market they have on low-end specs! Dye, Crysis!!!

Developers get big paychecks from graphics card producers. The least they can do is play along and make Crysis and the like run like crap on lower specs. If you really want to pay let's say 50$ for a game, you can afford to invest 200$ in AMD's marvel GPU right now, and that will make all your other (read: older) games run better too, "the way they were meant to be played". Plus all the games you might "borrow from your neighbour"...
Now, if they just stopped worrying about piracy and let the pirate market bloom free, and people paying the distribution only of the game and the development being paid by hardware manufacturers instead... this scenario would work IMO. If a lot of people are paying big dollars for the "Dark Knight" on premiere, they will be paying big dollars too for the graphics cards. And those with lower expectations will play with lower quality or at a much later time, creating a balance between the rich and the poor, (or the one who wants to spend 4000$ for a computer to replace within 6 months and the one who instead replaces once a year a 1000$ PC).
IMO this could work. Games requiring more computer power generally deliver better graphics and gameplay, so the more-the better. This can't work on the OS level though, so the only hope of free OS for all is from open source. If everything is free, there is nothing to worry about piracy. People will still pay for customer support, bragging, being the first to do something, etc. and revenue will still be made. This will also help new competitors in the hardware area, as they will not be burdened with software development costs until they have gained a certain marked share.
I know this sounds a bit too idealistic, but this is just an idea, inspired by the relation "better hardware - greater hardware requirements".