My understanding is that the differences in graphic quality between games for systems like Xbox One and PS4 and Pixar-style movies stems from that the former are rendered in real-time.
But even with real-time rendering, it looks like some game makers can get rather nice looking results. An example below is about the new Gears of War game:
Above image is from this YouTube video posted by GameSpot. So admittedly it could be from a video (e.g. a promo) that has been rendered more than the actual game.
Anyway so what I wanted to ask is, are games solely dependent on the real time rendering on the target system, or are there some steps developers can take (besides the obvious: start with as good graphics as possible) to improve the graphics in their game?
Edit: here I am referring strictly to in-game graphics.