Found this on a kotaku article, dunno if already posted:

On the flipside, they seem to have implemented motion blur.

Best way to hide low res textures

No, the best way to hide low res textures is to keep them off screen altogether.

Why render textures when they're off-screen anyways? Just fills up the VRAM with information noone sees.

Wow, so 112 people voted (1/3 of votes) that a cut-scene is more important to them than gameplay. I suspected this was the direction today's gaming culture was shifting more and more towards...

I meant that if the intent was to hide poor textures, it would be easier (and cheaper from a rendering standpoint) to just not show it at all, not to try to conceal it with motion blur.

Besides, if they let that floor texture show, I doubt they'd go to so much trouble to disguise a passing doll.

You're drawing wrong conclusions.

If the game receives a graphical downgrade, it won't affect the gameplay but stabilise the framerate.
It's more likely that some people feel like they're being lied to.

In the end, this "downgrade" will not affect the sales at all, nobody who previously wanted to buy the game will suddenly reconsider his decision.

Yeah, the Kotaku article does prove there have been at least some noticeable downgrades.

However, it doesn't put me off buying the game at all. I expected we'd get a game that would have similar technical shortcomings to the original Xenoblade: low quality textures, slightly ugly faces and some animation issues.

Despite those issues, and despite noticeable jagged edges, I played and loved Xenoblade for over 120 hours and will be playing it again once I'm done with Mother 3 (I'm having a JRPG on the go alongside whatever else I play this year). The technical issues won't, for me, compromise the immersion in the game world that I'm anticipating most. I can't wait to explore Mira, and while graphical downgrades are disappointing, it's not something that would ever make me avoid buying this game.

Well, if I was the director of this cutscene, I'd rather have some blur hide poor textures than remove whole objects from the scene, which might drastically change the tone of the cutscene. Also I think that people focus much more on moving, living objects than some blurry floor.