Its always the case. The step forwards always seems less of a distance than the jump back.
I remember the 360 getting a lot of flak initially for the games being barely any better looking than the better PS2/Xbox games. But it was because they were carrying the rose tinted memories of how those PS2/XB games looked.
Going back, it was clear how many more polygons were in character models and how much more details texturing was etc.