Hardware

While I agree with you to a certain extent, these technologies always take different paths depending on those priorities. The thing with 3d and 2d graphics was that they were working with limiting technology. In fact I would even use that as an argument against just "building a better machine." Back then they had to make software work with the limitations of the hardware. You couldn't just duct tape two SNES's together and get better performance. They had to be efficient or have no product to even release. Nowadays you can just buy more computing power. Even when it comes to graphics there are so many companies that release unoptimized software onto the market because the consumer can just "build a better machine." Crypto has so much unnecessary redundancy that all of the computations just get thrown out the window while only 1 computer gets to add to the Blockchain and gets that reward for the actual mining.

Those older industries had more limitations than we did so they had to make it as efficient as possible. Now we have so much computing power there is no incentive to make things more efficient save for long term viability. Which none of these companies give a shit about as long as they are making money. I'm not saying they need to hit the magic "efficiency" button. I'm just saying they're lazy and making everyone else pay the price.