We've also seen a growing trend of companies focusing more and more on getting out the next coolest engine rather than a good game. Many games these days are just playable technology demos that happen to sell well (I still firmly believe Doom 3 will be this.)

Reserve judgements untill the game is out. What you said about Doom 3 shows complete ignorance of the facts. Id has stated that they are going AGIANST the groove with this title and will try to make a story bound and atmospheric retteling of the original Doom. Hell they even hired a REAL writer to set up the script even before production began.
So untill the game is released i would reserve my comments if I were you.

About the other things in your post, I agree completely. Im sick of developers making unoptimised and clunky engines just for the sake of the game having ALL THE SHINY OPTIONS and THE KEWLEST GRAPHICS. No one seems to be puttning any effort into writing a bit of decent code nowdays. They think that superior hardware is going to pull them out of the sewers. And Im starting to suspect there is a kind of conspiracy going on inside the PC games industry to get more people to buy consoles, or constantly upgrade their PCs.
I say, fuck that. I guess the main problem is that PC hardware is getting more powerfull in such great leaps, the developers are simply too lazy to rid their code of bugs and optimise it. Kudos to John Carmack and id for being the exception to the rule with all of their games so far, hopefully Doom 3 will be made with the same care and attention and if its not, well fuck it there is always Blizzard.