Honestly as much as I whinge about the wow factor no longer being there, the reduction in quantum graphical leaps is somewhat softened for me since, as a child of 4th and 5th gen who remembers having my mind blown by Starfox 64, there are Xbox 360 games that still impress me visually. Heck, even some Wii games still look nice in my book. As interesting as I find the tech side of things, art direction and performance are more important nowdays, I find.

The one thing I hated about Gen 6 and 7 was the abuse of bloom. It was terrible and makes games look ugly to me personally.
It wasn't untill about half way through the generation when techniques like texture and mesh streaming... And the push towards baked shadow and lighting that games started to have a complex look.

Art does make the difference though, it really does.

Yeah, a lot of games in 2005-2008 overused bloom to an obnoxious degree. There were some games that used it well though; Metroid Prime 3 for example employed it tastefully and it looked quite nice. 60fps also helps when it comes to how well something ages graphically, cos while textures, shaders, etc will all advance with time, 60fps will always be silky smooth. ;)

That is one of the reasons why I am part of the PC gaming master race. ;)

ITT Everyone seems to assume generations equal graphics. generations are defined by customers and the product available. for many generations it has been very easy to define generations as graphics because graphics greatly undershot reality and they are easy to improve...or were easy to improve! In 1991 it wasn't hard for a small art crew to improve graphics from Super Mario Bros to Super Mario World. Now it takes an army 100s of millions of dollars to go from GTA 3 to GTA IV.
If someone can produce an intersting new value proposition outside of graphics, they not only stand to define the new generation, but potentially to dominate it. I believe Switch is that proposition. TBH, Wii was also that proposition, but Nintendo ran out of steam on the motion controller innovation prett quick. i think N's poor follow through will prevent Switch from dominating, too, but I strongly believe in 10 years we'll all recognize Switch as the leader of the new generation.