Well, if you ask me, 720p just ain't good enough for a 2013 console. I mean, think about it. It's not just about today, those consoles will be around for at least 5 years and it's very possible that even in 2020 people will still be playing with them. By that time 4K TVs will be dirt cheap and 8K will be right around the corner. And you really don't want a 4K TV to upscale 720p, trust me. 720p was never the real deal. It was a compromise to lower the cost in the early days of HD. The problem is, that it just doesn't want to fit with the other resolutions. You see, 4K is exactly four times 1080p. So if you upscale 1080p to 4K, you get four pixels for one pixel. The results are just what you would expect from a native 1080p display. With 720p that won't happen. The image gets messed up as you get double pixels, triple pixels or even quad pixels let alone pixels that just disappear altogether. Depends on the upscaler, but you will have issues like that every time when you view a 720p image on a TV with a higher resolution. After all, it's always the native resolution you will want to have. Only that gives you the optimal image quality. 

In 2013 1080p displays are more common than not and a device that releases in that very year should be capable of rendering in 1080p, no matter what the content is. It's called future proof and it's very important for consoles, not so much for PCs.

Sorry for da bad engrish, I tried. :(

a game in 720/900p

Of course a monitor has a scaler. They just aren't very good ones and they often go un-used, often the same goes for Televisions too.
Otherwise if you didn't have a scaler (Some Korean monitors don't have one) you just get a large fat black border around a 720P image on a 1440P display.

On the flipside PC GPU's can handle scaling tasks anyway and can do much more than what is essentially a "Fixed function scaler" in fixed devices such as a console, the reason why some upscaled stuff looks horrible on PC is because you are sitting close to the screen so you can see the shortfalls of an upscaled image.
Upscaling 720P and 1080P video and games on my 1440P panels always looks "good enough" if I'm across the room. - Get up close and you see how crap those resolutions really are, yet some people would still be perfectly content with it.

There is no 1:1 mapping when scaling 900p or 720p to 1080p. You can have 1:1 mapping when scaling 720p to 1440p or 2160p, but otherwise you're stuck with 2 pixels for every 3 pixels on your tv. It looks better when your console upscales the render resolution since the HUD information is usually put on top in 1080p. Console scaler isn't always better, it depends on the tv. My projector did a bettter job at upscaling Alan Wake and Forza Horizon than the 360, so I left the console output in 720p.

I prefer 1080p on pc with less or no AA over 720p with copious amounts of AA. I rather have a sharp picture with some aliasing artifacts then the softness of upscaled dvd quality.

The fact that this thread exists alone is evidence that the issue is bothering people.

It doesn't really matter if a game is 1080p, as long as it is a great game. I even say it is the first thing that should be sacrificed to make a game run better.
But i just need to think back to last gen and how many times i heard the "most multiplats look better on my console of choice" argument. And many of these people who used this argument now trying to make it seem irrelevant. That's the irony of the situation.

Well, to be fair, people who said it wasn't a big deal back then are now saying how it's soo important to have better multiplats. It works both ways. It always works both ways in console wars. ^^

I like shiny stuff 8p. actually do have an issue with Wii games on my big screen, they look rough, but I'm probably in the minority, 73 inches compared to 40 or so is vastly different. doesn't make me not play them just wish they were better. OT, there is a noticeable difference between 720 and 1080 to me, but I'm a videophile so textures are very apparent.

You did great.  And I definitely see and respect your POV.

You must be fun at parties.

Why not? You see, 4K is exactly nine times 720p. So if you upscale 720p to 4K, you get nine pixels for one pixel. The results are just what you would expect from a native 720p display.

pixel doubling (horizontally and vertically) of 1920 x 1080 = 3840 x 2160

pixel tripling (horizontally and vertically) of 1280 x 720 = 3840 x 2160

Upscaling from 720p to 1080p is a much bigger problem than upscaling from 720p to 4K. The mess is in the present with the most common resolution 1920x1080, not in the future.