So are consoles holding back this game?

[Bishop81]

Thanks. It sounds like the lower level APIs are doing similar things to what projects like Mantle attempt to achieve, except since PS4 is a fixed platform, it's much more closely tailored to the hardware in PS4

More like Mantle is trying to do what console APIs have done for ages.

Even so I believe the likes of Mantle and DX12 will only be a halfway point between pre-12 DX/OpenGL and console APIs.

PS: Consoles frequently let you go to a very low level. N64 and PS2 let you rewrite the microcode even.