Looking back at some of the gameplay I guess it really is 60 FPS that did it for me. It looks good in motion but indeed nothing special. I guess its one of the very few games that had constant 60 FPS on the Wii U (SSB, MK8, Super mario 3D world, Splatoon, Captain toad, Nintendo Land, Mario & Sonic at the winter olympics winter games, Sonic lost world and NSMBU what I can find from Nintendo published games)

Shinen's games were all 60fps on the Wii U as well; Nano Assault Neo, Art of Balance, and FAST Racing Neo. I did really like that both them and Nintendo continued to prioritize 60fps despite working with relatively underpowered hardware.

This seems to be continuing on Switch too; Splatoon 2, ARMS, and Mario Odyssey are all 60fps. If Starfox Grand Prix is real, it almost certainly will be too.

Let´s hope it looks better then Star Fox Zero did. Is fast racing NEO any good? I had my eye on that for a while and I might want to pick it up with some VC games on my Wii U. 

Oh it will almost certainly look far, far better than Starfox Zero. In addition to being limited by the weaker Wii U hardware, SFZ was further held back by having to push two separate viewpoints, (A 720p one on the TV and a separate 854x480 one on the Gamepad) with a 60fps target. It was essentially running in splitscreen 900p all the time, in addition to the usual halving of rendering time that comes from a 60fps target.

That and they intentionally didn't want it to look graphically different than it's predecessors, if I recall, so they limited themselves to a more cartoony look, which in this case didn't work out too well. Mario can be cartoony, but Metroid and star for should be more realistically styalized imo.

Nah, I don't think a toon shaded look would suit Starfox well at all.

I'd say a combination of the Starfox Zero and F-Zero GX art styles with more complex geometry and materials would be the best fit. 

There's also always the middle ground.  Soft shading for characters but more complex or realistic materials for the world and clothing and such.  Dragon Age XI and Xenoblade 2 come to mind.  That technique could work out quite well.

I still don't think that would work at all; the characters look fine as they are in Zero, toon shading does not belong in every series and it does not belong in Starfox, the series already has a working established aesthetic.

Ok toon shading and soft shading aren't the same thing, just to be clear :P

And Star Fox sorta does.  They've made more than a few tweaks and adjustments over time.

I think an approach with more detailed materials can work.  More akin to, say, Super Mario Odyssey or a Pixar film.  

The extra power of the Switch would really benefit the existing aesthetic though; Fox and Peppy could have awesome fur effects, think Starfox Adventures but with Odyssey levels of fidelity. That would be a much better fit than just using soft/toon shading as a copout not to have to render fine detail.