Not sure this is a product of "attacking a problem from a different angle" as it is a case of "new technology finally made it a viable solution." There were age-old AA methods using final-scene pixel filters 20 yrs ago. The main problem was that they were actually much slower (back then) than doing poly-edge AA. This because both the cost of per-pixel filtering was very expensive and also because poly counts were much lower, so edge-aliasing made a mot more sense on a bandwidth level as well. Furthermore, increased texture res helps the filters out as well: the effect it had on the (often blocky and low-res) textures wasn't particularly inspiring, and you'd spend your time trying to have the filter account for that (unsuccessfully). Nowdays, it is no longer a concern. (yay!)