In my opinion there's only one thing more harmful to this industry than the ones that consider themselves hardcore gamers when in my opinion they should see themselves as hardcore techies or hardcore experiencers, and those are the "hardcore trendies" or in other words, people that blindly follow the "what's cool" trend without even knowing anything about the subject they're so "invested in".
One example of this is a huge part of the supposedly "graphics first" (I say supposedly because it should be expected from a "graphics first" player to at least know what "good tech" is) community of this forum, speaking about graphics in a way that clearly demonstrate that they don't understand what they're seeing.
One recent example of that is when in front of those pictures:
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3787/12510267324_abef78ac6d_b.jpg
http://i.minus.com/ibx4ZLEegQTO7i.gif
Most of the graphics first posters say:
Those are "PS3/360" graphics in a more colourful style.
The logic behind those words it's of course the following one:
"The WiiU is as powerful as Xbox 360 or PS3 so it can't accomplish, technically speaking, anything that those consoles couldn't do so everything good about a WiiU game is thanks to the artstyle and anything else".
No, those "colours" are there thanks to the game using a deferred engine, which allows for a ton of light sources to be used in the scene with a much smaller computational cost while at the same time increasing the bandwidth requirements (much bigger buffers).
There's one thing as important as hardware muscle, and this is hardware architecture, and in this regard the WiiU is much ahead of those past generation consoles.
Here, there's a comparison shot between the Xbox One version of MGS V and the Xbox 360 version of the same game:
http://i.minus.com/iOJzJC7UVOpWJ.png
vs
http://i.minus.com/ibauxc9d9FseUH.png
Our "graphics first" comunity here on neogaf should point that "both games are the same technically speaking" (at least in terms of lighting) but that "the Xbox One version has a more colourful style".
No, it's not "the colour", it's THE LIGHT SOURCES!
Of course, their claim in front of those shots wouldn't be that one because here their reasoning would be:
"The Xbox One is a generation ahead of the Xbox 360, so the differences between both versions of the game are due to the enhanced processing power of the One in comparison with its predecessor".
And it's at this point where I reach the conclusion that it doesn't matter how the game looks, for the vast majority of the "graphic first" community the only thing that matters is what the "trend" says it has to matter.
The tech (the engine) used behind Mario Kart is one of the most modern there has been out there, and it's more modern than a lot of cross-gen multiplatform games such as Tomb Raider Ultimate edition for example, even when TRU can of course push the edge beyond what's technically possible on WiiU (even using more modern approaches) thanks to the superior hardware capacity of the PS4/Xbox One.
That claim is also valid for the "1080p or die" crowd. Since now what's cool is "resolution" it's (at least) sad to see how in the vast majority of graphical comparisons the resolution seems to be the first and last thing that matters.
Not the amount of light sources, nor the framerate, nor the shader quality, nor anything besides resolution. One game is 1080p and the other one is only 900p? The rest doesn't matters, the winner is the one with higher resolution, period.
I'm against putting graphics above everything else, but for god's sake, if you chose to follow that criteria at least learn a thing or two about actual graphical technologies and don't limit your claims to what should only be said by the PR manager of a certain company trying to sell their products and not caring at all about gaming or technology.
