It's all about the game engine and how well that engine uses the machine that is processing it. In truth, you probably can't say out right that it's a certain percentage but through experience you can ball park how well your engine is using the system it's on. That, I think, is where the percentage comes in. Crysis is a great engine and will tax some of the most high end PC's today...the engine Bedazzled runs on isn't that great and those same computers aren't being used to their fullest potential when that game is running, so you see, it's entirely possible for a game not to push a system fully- especially when that system requires a new method of coding.
Things that also have to be considered are techniques and tricks that developers use to compensate for their engine's shortcomings. Tricks like displacement and normal mapping, which will only improve as time goes on (folks who don't know what the hell I'm talking about visit : http://www.mudbox3d.com or http://www.zbrush.com ). These techniques will help devs make games that aren't pushing all that many polys appear to push more and when intergrated into an engine like Project Offset's or Crysis, the apparent graphic power is all the more visually impressive even if the system it's on is not technically any different than before. Perfect example...Crystal Dynamic's Tomb Raider games on the PS2 versus those by Eidos...CD's Tomb Raider is much more graphically impressive but the PS2's specs didn't change so how do you explain it? Simple - they use a better engine that interfaces with the PS2 more efficiently and allows for tricks that weren't possible in previous engines on the very same system.
So folks saying that Dev's are lying really aren't understanding what it is that Dev's are saying, just like folks guessing at numbers don't fully understand what it is they're guessing about.
-Teyon.
3D Modeler/Animator
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