Or more specifically, would it be better if "We didn't know"?

This new gen, like every one before it, there is/are a new metric by which a games performance is measured. Nothing wrong there per say, but now more than ever games and sometimes entire platforms are being dismissed (not just by gamers but even developers) by its ability to check certain performance boxes. Once, it used to always be about how a game played first, then abut how it looked and its art style, then music and story.... now, everything is the other way round with actual gameplay being the last thing that is ever talked about. If you watch a number of reviews, its becoming increasingly difficult to see an actual description of how a game plays, hell; some reviewers only talk about the gameplay in a game when its bad. I find this very disturbing, being that at the end of the day, ist a games gameplay that keeps you playing.

AA, AO, motion blur, 30fps, 60fps, shadow maps, 720p.900p,1080p...... these are all the current industry buzzwords. Reviewers subconciously spend more time talking about a game engine performance, runs at this or that resolution, sometimes drops to this or that framerate, darw distance isn't as good as this or that other game, textures in the distance gets blurred, only supports 16p multiplayer....blah blah blah, and don't actually talk about how the game actually feels to play. And gamers seem to be just as guilty of all this too.

If a game is running at 30fps or 60fps and that framerate is locked and consistent, it would yeild a smooth judder free experience, and truth is, most gamers would not be able to tell the difference. If a game is running at 720p, 900p or 1080p and is optimized for that resolution, again.... most gamers would be unable to tell the difference if all the textures are of the best quality and clear. How many times do you see some gamers only start to bitch about resolution or framerate only after some tech site has used some kinda analytical equipment to point them out?

So my question is this, would we all be overall better off if we didnt know? If a game just said HD and no talk about framerates and resolutions? If we didnt know if it was using FXAA, MSAA or whatever other type of AA solution? 

Amm none of those are buzzwords. How is 30 fps or 720p meant to impress anyone nowadays? The cell was a buzzword. The cloud is a buzzword.

But I notice pretty much everyone of them straight away. GTAV was pretty terrible on last gen consoles on account of the framerate. I was able to get over the shimmering but the framerate was sickening at times.

Easy, by the graphics looking gorgeous. Trine 2 Director's Cut is the best looking game I've ever seen and it's 720p/30fps.

720p@30fps is nowhere as bad as you make it sound. In all honesty, theer is nothing wrong with how it actually looks sitting 7-10ft away from a tv. And this is exactly what I am saying, people talk about these things as if a game not running at some sort of resolution or framerate instantly makes it a bad game. GTAVs problem is an unstable framerate, and i thik that is more important. Better to have a fixed consistent framerate than it to be at 60hz or 120hz. 

And no, cell isn't as much a buzzword as the cloud is today.... a buzz word(s) is soething that comes up in every single game discussion. And if yu look at them, all you see today is talk about rez, frames, AA. Over and over and over again.

I have also come to learn that majority of the people that say they notice every single performance marker right off the bat are simply just flat out lying.

I think most people don't even know what a games resolution really means and how it works in relation to the human eye and perception...... and thats is what is really sad about the whole resolution talk.

That's a weird critique...I'm not saying that I think resolution is hugely important, but I don't see why someone needs to understand how it works to see the benifits of a higher resolution over a lower one.

All else equal 1080p looks better than 720p regardless of if the viewer knows why or how.

I disagree. The trade off of graphics for gameplay is far more of a "buzzword" scenario in modern gaming perception. Is it that hard to realize that graphics and performance are often keys to new and better gameplay methods? The clamor over graphics today is in the spirit of setting a standard of quality, Sure some games might be just as fine off with 720p over 1080p or 30fps over 60fps, but not all, and in the end the higher numbers are going to better. Necessary? No. Better? Yes. Detriment to another unrelated vital aspect of a game? No.

The artstyle remains the most important factor of a games visuals. Period.

true, very true. no argument there, but something that gets completely ignored is sitting distance. 

Take a game running on two displays for instance, one display is 1080p and one at 720p. All other effects being equal, that is perfect framerate, perfect AA (so no jaggies) and basically perfect everything else. And say both of these displays are 40" diagonal. Both of them are of the exact same manufacturer and all the settings are identical. If you put someone 12-15ft away from that setup, its just physically impossible to tell the difference from the two games.

It is physically impossible, for the simple reason being that at that distance and for a 40" panel, the human eye cannot resolve the pixel structure of 720p. so the detail benefits of 1080p will be lost to you. You would have to go closer to the display to see the difference. 

This is why i say most poeple that talk rez doesn't really know how it works. Yes, if you have a 50"+ tv and sitting at about 10ft you will be able to tell a slight difference between 1080p and 720p.... but not to the point where one looks waaaaaay better than the other. Mind you, I game on a 100+ inch screen from less than 9ft away, so I am noot saying any of this cause I simply just don't know any better. 

In truth, this whole rez crap is PC nitpicking that has filtered into the console space, but ppl fail to realize that this is only really important to PC gamers, cause they typically sit no further 3-4ft away from their displays.

If I wouldn't care at all about graphics, there's no point in buying a Next-Gen console.