I'd wager that when developers think of two competing console platforms, they think of them more as "well, we have to support both if we want to reach 100% of the market for our game", as opposed to thinking of them as two different graphics cards, with one being slower than the other, which is how fans seemingly approach them.
So the PS4/XB1 (or 360/PS3) inevitably get lumped into a single category. Of course, the specific engineers working on the game will likely do whatever they have to do to make the game run well on each machine, and that often ends up naturally leading to differences, regardless of what any individual PR statement says. That's why numerous games that have mentioned "parity" in PR still ultimately have differences between them. Pretty much no one is ever like "Console X will have more detailed foliage and a longer draw distance!" in their prerelease PR, even though that may be what ends up happening in the final released game. Some might say that's because in prerelease...they want to avoid debates and stuff
Basically, every developer PR effectively wishes we were already in the one console standard future. Haha.
Of course, any developer who's paid attention to these threads over the past year or so probably should understand that saying the word "parity" is kinda controversial and reword their PR accordingly. But at the same time, if it's the PR that's bothering people (and not the ultimate end result of the games)...then it does seem a bit weird to immediately jump to "preorder canceled" based off one vague term that has been shown over and over again to not really be very accurate in summing up the performance differences (or lack thereof) in multiplatform games. I would assume that more concrete info would affect one's interest in a game, not poorly worded and vague PR.
