I just bought a 55" plasma... will this look like shit on it then?
I'm not TV tech savy.
No. Although it is disappointing to see that non-native resolutions won't be a given, and although scaling always corrupts IQ, "shit" would be too harsh of a judgment. The game will look fine, and I'll play it.
The only thing that rustles some jimmies is that for a retail price of $500, Microsoft could have made a console that would not have needed to compromise on baselines like native 1080p. Instead, they spent parts of the R&D, BOM, and silicon budgets on media capabilities and Kinect, and thereby compromised the gaming aspect to some extend; for instance, by making a safe bet on 8GB of DDR3. For a $300 console, 900p would not be an issue, but for a $500 console, it does suck a bit, especially after we waited 7-8 years for next-gen consoles and hoped to finally get hardware that finally can deliver the native resolution of TVs.