I don’t think it’s seen as the end game, it’s that if you want 120 fps (or 144, 165, or 240) without turning down your graphics settings you’re talking $1000+ G

I don’t think it’s seen as the end game, it’s that if you want 120 fps (or 144, 165, or 240) without turning down your graphics settings you’re talking $1000+ GPUs plus a huge case and a couple hundreds watts higher on your power supply. 1440p hits a popular balance where it’s more pixels than 1080p but not so absurdly expensive or power hungry. Eventually 4K might be reasonably affordable, but we’ll settle at 1440p for a while in the meantime like we did at 1080p (which is still plenty popular too).