> That’s correct for AAA titles. Casual gamers however often play on PCs without a dedicated GPU.
Even in such case, they wouldn't commonly use Sandy Bridge generation GPU. And those who use it, aren't expecting recent games to support it (whether they are demanding or not). Increasing number of games already require OpenGL 4.x, even if they are not very demanding in practice. And now with Vulkan, older Intel GPUs simply won't cut it anymore.
Before it happened, software developers need to choose whichever GPU API works best for their particular project.
Personally, I have not developed games for several years.
For the last 1.5 years, I’ve been working on a CAD/CAM software. Traditionally people use OpenGL for this area. I have picked D3D 11 instead. The renderer is reasonably sophisticated; there are many complex shaders in there. The software is now used by thousands customers worldwide, and yet there were very few rendering-related bugs so far.
Even in such case, they wouldn't commonly use Sandy Bridge generation GPU. And those who use it, aren't expecting recent games to support it (whether they are demanding or not). Increasing number of games already require OpenGL 4.x, even if they are not very demanding in practice. And now with Vulkan, older Intel GPUs simply won't cut it anymore.