dude did you even follow the FF14 ARR prelaunch?

Consoles are not the reason for the graphical change, yoshida wanted this game played by many people as possible. Also the graphics in ff14 1.0 was tooo dam good that a nasa grade pc was needed to play. They even made a funny joke about it showcasing a tiny flower pot fropm 1.0, stating it was the most beautiful flower pot in any game. It also had the graphical data = to a player character now picture roughly 40 of those in 1 area, on top of 300 players. It just wasn't happening.

nothing in ARR relaunch are the resukt of consoles but design choices of yoshida and the dev trying to make a great game accessible to a good portion of players, amd this game still looks pretty good (even on ps3)