Hardware

[Molloy]

There isn't really the same incentive to upgrade your PC these nowadays as back in the 90's. Very little software available today tends to stress even the mid range systems. There's a big trend towards laptops and more recently netbooks so I'd say 'gaming' PC's are going to go the way of the dodo.

I've fallen somewhat out of love with PC gaming recently due to the DRM. And I'm playing PC games for 15 years so it's not like I'm unaccustomed to these things. Bioshock was an absolute nightmare to get running. I had to reinstall it 3 times. GTA4 was also an absolute pain in the arse. You had to register for two different online accounts, it takes 45mins to install and I needed new drivers which weren't made available for my card till a month after the games release.

[Jedah]

It's the difficulty to control the usage of this specific platform and the need to sell its over 15 year old features (HD graphics, network services, emulation) as something new and exciting, that puts so many roadblocks in its way. While in the process the industry is taking away from the user as much of control as possible. It is always about how to make more money giving less. What the consumer wants is masterfully directed through marketing.

Talking about PC gaming, I came across this site.

[Worm]

There isn't really the same incentive to upgrade your PC these nowadays as back in the 90's. Very little software available today tends to stress even the mid range systems.

The video card arms race didn't even start until 1999. Do you mean software aside from games? Regardless, I really don't see how the situation has changed. Mainstream applications have never pushed hardware terribly hard, and plenty of games and specialized applications (audio/video editing, 3D rendering) demanded lots of power back then just as they do today.

Could you explain?

[Molloy]

Alright, now this is a separate thread I feel I can expand my point a little bit. I'm not quite sure how to explain precisely but I'll have a go at it.

In 1995 every application on your computer ran slowly. Lots of incentive to upgrade.

In 1998 things are moving a bit more smoothly, but having two or three applications running makes it sluggish. Lots of incentive to upgrade.

Year 2000 you have a 1ghz machine. It runs multiple applications pretty smoothly. The main incentives to upgrade are photoshop, audio/visual editing, 3d rendering etc.

Current day: mid range PC can handle consumer level photo, audio and video editing. There's really only a handful of games every year that really incentivise an upgrade.

Even clueless consumers have cottoned onto this in the last 12 months. For years they were being sold machines more powerful than they needed when all they intended doing with them was browsing the internet and doing word processing. There were more laptops sold worldwide last year than desktops, and pretty much all of them have pathetic graphics cards so I wouldn't like to be publishing a hardware accelerated game right now.