So Goopy sits more than 7 meters away from his TV and you are sitting 1 - 2 meters away from your TV?

Both these extremes aren't that common.

Also many Switch games are only 720p in docked mode. So why shouldn't Microsoft be allowed to offer an entry-level console for the price-conscious people who consider 720p in some games "good enough" for diiferent reasons (sitting far away, using a small tv,...)?

Surely not, but the point was that there is no way to even begin to compare the functionality of 12 GB of RAM fed by a 50 MB/s HDD versus 8 or 10 GB fed by a 3 GB/s SSD. One can fill the RAM in a few seconds. The other, I'm not even sure how developers accomplish the miracle of making games appear on screen after only half a minute or so to begin with.

"Play your next-gen games on the most powerful console*. Xbox Series starting at 299$",

Problem solved.

It depends on distance AND TV size.

Also believe it or not but there's a combination of these two where there isn't much of a difference between 720p and 1080p.

Try sitting 1 meter in front of my TV. You would easily be able to see the difference between 4k and 8k, so this grand epic 1080p would look like shit on that distance.

More to an output image than resolution.

We aren't even at the point where we can have photo-realistic images even at 720P, let alone 2160P.

Many titles of the 7th gen weren't even 720P... Halo 3, Call of Duty and so forth being prime examples.
Plus many games opted for morphological anti-aliasing rather than MSAA or such... So images were terrible.

There is a big difference between 1080P and 2160P, but the extent of which depends on a myriad of factors like individual eyesight acuity, display size, display technology, display resolution, distance seated away from the display, even the ambient lighting.

A console is the sum of it's parts.
You can have the fastest CPU in the world, if you are GPU or Memory limited... You still are not going to achieve 60fps.

Besides, the Super Nintendo had 60fps games and that console only had a single core, 3.58Mhz processor... Verses the Xbox 360 with a 3-core, 3200Mhz hyperthreaded processor or Xbox One with an 8-core 1750Mhz processor.

The Xbox One X games are very slim on the 60fps pickings because that is what developers opted for, the GPU is also capable of offloading many tasks that used to be done on the CPU as well, they are highly programmable these days...

Many games also didn't stream (Especially simpler titles!), they stored everything in memory and just simply had chunky load points... Those titles it does not  make a difference if it's an optical disk with 5MB/s transfer rates or 5500MB/s of SSD transfer rates.

An SSD is only a tiny fraction of the speed of Ram (And much higher latency!), it cannot replace Ram. - Otherwise we wouldn't bother with Ram, but the performance implications of ignoring the 400-500GB/s of Ram bandwidth for only 5.5GB/s of SSD bandwidth is catastrophic.

I don't agree. Given that graphics won't receive THAT much of an upgrade, and even some 8th gen games will look as good as a 9th gen game(or maybe even better), alongside many games being crossgen, people will just stick to their XOne or PS4 if MS brings nothing enticing to the table regarding their 9th gen consoles.

If you are worried about people that chose the cheap version to get 1080p getting lower through the gen then you also should worry about people that buy the expensive version to get 4k getting lower than it through the gen. The gap between both will remain the same through the gen so if resolution is sacrificed for better IQ and other stuff that would apply to the weaker similarly. And in some cases perhaps the effects put on the stronger HW isn't worth the same as the pixels (4k and 1080p sacrifices would look very different) so they just don't put that effect and keep resolution on base version.

I don't think Sony can keep PS4Pro really relevant next gen, they would need to have it at less than 249 to make sense. Would be easier to have PS4 at 149 to keep the entry line.

"Lockhart CPU Rumored to be at the Same Clock as XSX; Up to Devs Whether to Target 1080@60 or 1440@30"

https://wccftech.com/lockhart-cpu-rumored-to-be-at-the-same-clock-as-xsx-up-to-devs-whether-to-target-108060-or-144030/

Not really, companies have been doing it. If I'm not wrong Xbox One use similar stuff. Most powerful console, best multiplats, starting at and show the lowest price for Xbox SAD.

Car companies do the same, show their most luxury version of the car and say starting at and show the price of the barebone.