You bring good points, but you forget one things - artists love control. Take that away from them and they cry like babies who lost their candy.
Procedural art is really cool if you can think about your asset as a programmer - but you need to remember artists do not think like us. If you are willing to replace your artists with tech artists though, that's a different story (note: normally those people are rare, and stay in one field programming shaders).
"The problem there? Everything looks the same." -- Yes, that's exactly the desired consequence by artists, and as mentioned, will cry if their flexibility is revoked by tools they are not familiar with (in house model/texture generators).
While you as a programmer think of a texture of "noise and color", artists think about it as brush strokes, materials and emotions.
Procedural generation doesn't automatically mean that the artist has no control. There will still be inputs guiding the generated content. Artists will still have the final say as to what will get into the game.
You have to make the GUI artist-friendly though, inputting some numbers and hitting a button won't do. The tree generation company (SpeedTree) is actually a good example. Their program is very easy to work with even for artists and you can generate a large scala of realistic-looking trees.
Also, with procedural generation you can achieve a more varied look. For example: If artists have to design every tree, you get a few specimens that you place everywhere. With automatic generation, every tree can be different,
"Procedural generation doesn't automatically mean that the artist has no control" - It means they have less control, and they always bitch and moan about that.
Sure, some people will always bitch and moan about change. But look at it positively: it allows them to do more impressive things in less time. If they can make a good-looking forest in a day instead of three months, it means they can do more interesting things then hand-design trees.
Procedural art is really cool if you can think about your asset as a programmer - but you need to remember artists do not think like us. If you are willing to replace your artists with tech artists though, that's a different story (note: normally those people are rare, and stay in one field programming shaders).
"The problem there? Everything looks the same." -- Yes, that's exactly the desired consequence by artists, and as mentioned, will cry if their flexibility is revoked by tools they are not familiar with (in house model/texture generators).
While you as a programmer think of a texture of "noise and color", artists think about it as brush strokes, materials and emotions.