It became important the same way bits became important... marketing. These companies are always trying to claim something that the other one doesn't have. This era, it's all about those precious "frames".

Critical thinking is such a rare attribute and that's why these things multiply into mob-like feeding frenzies. Just do what I do. Ignore it and follow what really matters... the game.

I in general don't even play nearly enough games to really care all that much about FPS to be honest. Since I cherry pick the few games that I play on yearly basis and mostly those are very cinematic to begin with. I completed 4.5 games this year (hellblade being the .5). One of those being Nier Automata which framerate was unstable as hell.

But in the end for me and many reviewers it is rather simple 60fps doesn't make or break a game for most consumers and if it does those people should go Nintendo and PC. I can't remember the last 60fps game I played that I thought was really great. I think Uncharted 4 and Bloodborne (even with all its  FPS problems) are vastly superior to every PS4 game which happen to play in 60fps.

A stable 60+ fps is of course preferable over 30fps  (more is always better) but for most console games simply not achievable, since the hardware and especially the CPU are rather pathetically weak. I played hellblade uncapped for the most part, but I tought that the blurry 900p was more anoying than the 30fps. Thanks to the fact that the CPU in my Laptop and TV are probably stronger than the one in my PS4. But that's the burden of playing sole on consoles and not playing enough to justify building a 4k HDR pc.

Yeah i wonder that all time. I dont even remember the magazines in the ninetys even mentioning FPS much. Or resolution for that fact

As people get older they are able to afford better gaming options. And once you are used to better gaming experiences you don't want to go back. And it gets worse the better it gets. As someone who is used to Gsynced 144fps even 60fps seems stuttery now. FPS has always been important but most people have just never experienced the better options. If it wasn't for PC, people would still think 30fps is absolutely fine in this day and age. And as you can see, people who never experienced anything other than consoles still think 30fps is fine. Like a dung beetle thinks that rolling in shit all day is a way of life just because he never tried anything else.

If you cannot grasp the concept of getting used to better standards I can't really help you.

^^^

I'd say FPS has been extremely important since the NES era, but it wasn't referred to as FPS, but rather if the game felt smooth or not. I belive many of the platforms and racers of the 16-bit period was 60 FPS.

This is an excellent post, and I expect "4k textures" to soon become a trend that gamers suddenly care about because of Digital Foundry. To be fair, however, I notice that I am more aware of fluctuating fps in games nowadays since most run quite smoothly. I do not mind 30fps games, generally, but I am much more sensitive towards framerate hitches in modern games than I ever was in past generations. 

Then search for "fps" without 30 or 60... it has been quite constant, compared to 4K

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=60%20fps,60fps,30%20fps,fps,4k

This console generation there is much more talk about the resolution war (720p, 900p, 1080p, 1440p, 1800p, 4K, checkerboard, upscaling, downscaling, supersampling, dynamic resolution, temporal reconstruction...) than about frames per second... probably because the CPU part of the Jaguar APUs aren't that good.

fps + freesync will probably dominate the next round of the console war, when resolution ain't an issue anymore.

As soon as we had the tools and knowledge to understand what framerate is.

I remember as a kid, playing games that drop frames, and not knowing what was happening, but being annoyed.

When achieving good framerates became feasible.