First off the resolution and frame rate of a single game in isolation is not indicative of the capabilities of a console, especially for launch titles the have been create while the final spec of the hardware and drivers was in flux. In perfect world the console companies would complete the hardware and get a good set of drivers together a year before the console is sold to the public but no company has deep enough pockets to have finished product sitting around for a year. So we're left launch games that have to make the best of a bad situation.
The 1080p60 debate is also two fold, it's about comparing competing hardware and looking at what makes the best games. When it comes to what makes a good game I don't think that 1080p60 is the be all and end all requirement for the next gen. While there are games that will greatly benefit from running at 60fps and running at your TVs native res of 1080p will produces the sharpest image, this comes at a cost and some devs visions just wont fit into that framework even on a top spec PC. Dropping the res or the frame rate gives you more power to create better AI or put more characters on the screen at once or create bigger and/or richer environments. A 1080p image isn't always going to look better then one at 720p that has more graphical effects applied to it. An extreme example would be to compare a 720p game running complex lighting, particle effects and AA to a 1080p render of the same scene without any of that, you can see this for yourself on PC by setting up a game to ultra settings with the res set to 720 and then take the detail setting down to the lowest setting but set the res 1080 which looks better?
Using the Witch 2 here as a quick example I think demonstrates what I'm getting at, though it worth noting that even on lowest setting there is still a lot of lighting effects but the above pictures do show a nicer looking scene at 720p with ultra settings compared to it's 1080p low settings counterpart and personally I would prefer to be playing at 720p if that was the only way to get a good frame rate with ultra settings. Of course 1080p ultra settings will trump both and this example only shows "better" graphics at 720p rather then actual game benefits, but such comparisons can only really be provided by Dev test build examples, like it would be interesting if Capcom release a vid showing Dead Rising 3 running at 1080p60 & 720p30 with the max possible zombies on screen under both conditions.
That's why I don't think every game has to be 1080p60 however when it comes to comparing hardware you need to find examples of the same game running on both systems with more or less the same effects running on both builds. Helpfully these have been provided recently in the form of COD:Ghosts and Battlefield 4 and the results from these would suggest that the PS4 is more power then the XBox One (which is in keeping with raw power figures) which does beg the question of what happens when a game is designed as 720p30 on the PS4? I fear that the XBox One version at that point is going to start struggling to provide the same experience as the PS4 version. As I've already said these games were built to a moving target and there are plenty of reports to support the notion that the XBox One is the harder to code for system this time around so a true comparison of the 2 systems is still a year or more away.
The bottom line is that game-play is king and no matter what system your playing on a fun game will always win out over a visually pleasing one. Having both is best and I have faith in (at least some of) the devs out there to find the right balance for the game they want to make, while delivering some great fun and stunning looking games.
