The 'golden age' arcade games of the early 80s mostly ran at 60fps. And this trend continued in the arcades, with the most impressive early-90s 3D games also choosing framerate over detail, which was absolutely the right decision for Daytona USA, Sega Rally, Ridge Racer, and more. A solid 60fps pretty much defined 'arcade quality'.
It's understandable that early 3D home consoles had to aim a bit lower. But we're now on the 5th generation of 3D home console, and we're still making excuses to run at lower framerates than games of the 80s/90s?
But 4K, that just game too soon. Every recent generation of console has struggled to keep up with the rate of screen resolution increase. And 4K was a huge jump, from the 2 million pixels of 1080p to around 8 million pixels.
We could have been happy with 1080p for a lot longer if we'd had solid 60fps gaming with a bit more antialiasing, and streaming services with higher bitrates.
High-DPI screens are great if you're reading text off them at close range. But not really needed at a normal TV-watching or gaming distance.
I think 30fps is a straight up usability issue. The only times I've ever had motion sickness or a headache from games is when the game is 30fps (though not all 30fps games gave me these issues)
I hope the performance/quality modes become standard this generation.
I think you're wrong about frame rate though. I find 30fps unplayable. Also, people have had a taste for it. They have been playing 60fps titles since launch on the next gen consoles, it makes the frame rate all the more strange when you play something running at half that.
Not sure what you are talking about with games using unreal engine. It's also used for shooters, Gears of war is one of the flagship unreal titles. I'm sure the folks at unreal don't want people to think "the engine isn't for shooters".
Especially considering the engine originated from shooters -- Unreal and Unreal Tournament.