This is what Nintendo has been saying for the past 20 years, and failing. I get resolution doesn't matter for making a great game, but if you just purchased a 4K HDR TV and you hook up your Switch and see black bars or bad scaling issues, it's not something you are going to show off to your friends. More importantly, if developers have already moved on to a 4K standard, they are not going to bother to downgrade their 10GB of master artwork just to chase outdated hardware.
I wouldn't recommend anyone buy a 1080p TV right now if they can afford 4K -- it's readily available and a stable product, even Netflix is already supporting 4K. And that's the problem once again with Nintendo, there is already a 4K capable version of this tablet, but to save $20 they went with a slower older version of the chip. Same with the N64, same with the Wii.
Lets first consider the supposed hype of 4k.
To get proper 4k in casual mid weight you need a 1070 GTX video card, and for heavy games a minimum of 1080GTX.
Considering PCs hardly hit 4k at good fps even with a heavy card like that.. and most consoles "4k" is just upscaled 1080p... I think the whole thing about "ultra resolution" is overrated console wise.
There's no correlation between resolution and screen size. A 1-inch 4K display will have a higher picture quality than a 100-inch HD display.
And why the hell would you play in a 1 inch screen in 4k? its a useless gimmick.
You need something bigger than 24 inches (depending the distance).
4k in tiny screens of the cellphone is kinda irrelevant too.
At that size, you might be rendering 4k, but with total crap minimum quality pixels, textures and models.
This is for 2016, not 2017. You can get 4K TVs at Walmart for $300. Sony already supports it. Microsoft will fully support it this year with Scorpio.
I understand not wanting to chase the newest most expensive technology out of the gate but Nintendo is already a year behind, again.
Scorpio and similar will still be upscaled. there is a huge difference in "upscale", "compatible" "supporting" and actually rendering it natively.
It all depends on those "rumors". If they are still using AMD tech. It will only have like 6tflops. Slower than a 1070 card. Which struggles on medium quality textures and models at 4k.
It would require a TITAN X style card (or the upcoming TI, or AMD's equivalent named VEGA) to actually render 4k at full high quality.
So in my opinion, scorpio will do at most 4k at 30 fps in games that dont require much (Rpgs, etc..) and upscaled 1080 at 60fps or 2k at 30 fps for action games like COD
In the other hand..
Lets remember also that Nintendo does NOT aim for the "hardcore" gamer groups. everyone laughed at the Wii until it destroyed all the competition by selling more than ever to a very broad spectrum of gamers. Nintendo as almost always have some of the highest scores on game quality as well. Because they focus on the FUN aspect.. not in the "l33t graphic cool stuff" that some major publishers are aiming at (aka only graphics, zero substance. Like those madden and COD games that are remakes of themselves with minimal updates).