Without actual footage, it's hard to gauge what's what. That said, it amazes what people have come to see and then later accept as the norm for this generation. Going back just to the last generation and we could a large gulf in the way games used to look and animate. I am playing through KoTOR right now on 360 and I can tell you the jargon of "gam-ey" fits well. The animations are so basic, locking and popping from state to state that it makes you wonder about how far we've come on a hardware that is now over 7 years old with things like context sensitive, physics driven and mo-capped animations. It saddens me to see so many just accept things while forgetting to be appreciative. Then again, perhaps if they were to play older games, they'd face the stark contrast as well. So now, after 7 years, when we have already jumped to HD and animation (for human characters) seems top notch, environmental detail following in the same vein, what is it that can improved upon. And the simple answer is this: Lighting and the little things that still detracts from immersion (eg: object pop-in, jarring LoD system, cloth animation).
People should be more appreciative of what has been made possible on a closed system over the years and then imagine what's possible with the rumoured tech leap up ahead, not only in the beginning but also throughout its life time. That'll put into perspective the power figures.
