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Games Entertainment

Gamers Drive High-End PC Market 298

Posted by CmdrTaco from the department-of-the-obvious dept.
TibbonZero writes "CNN reports that "Gamers drive souped-up PC market". They talk about the cost of high end computers, as well as their place in the PC Market. For some reason I thought it was playing solitaire that drove us to buy a Geforce 4 ti 4600..."
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Gamers Drive High-End PC Market More

Gamers Drive High-End PC Market

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  • I had to buy a new video card to play this game. My VooDoo 3 wasn't cutting it anymore....

    • Re:GTA 3 (Score:5, Funny)

      by moonbender ( 547943 ) <moonbender@gmaEE ... inus threevowels> on Monday August 26, 2002 @02:49PM (#4142954)
      Shhhh! My parents think you need a high-end PC for studying computer science (hah!) and duly support me buying one, you're costing me real money here! ;)
      • Like at work...

        "Yeah boss, I need a larger monitor to display more code and a faster processor to compile faster!"
        • "Yeah boss, I need a larger monitor to display more code and a faster processor to compile faster!"

          I actually do need this. The code I could get by with a small monitor, but a large one is nice. As for the processor, it takes 10 minutes to build the whole project and 2 minutes to just build the part I'm working on. It was even worse on my old computer.

          • 10 minutes?


            Bah. Kids today.


            Not five years ago I worked on a project where builds were a day long process. My current project, it's an hour long job.


            Humbug.

        • Id rather have a larger monitor and a slower CPU than a fast CPU and a small monitor. Size matters.

          I want to have more than one xterm open on the screen at a time, alt-tabbing is ok, but I need to see contents in one window while im woking in another.

      • Shhhh! My parents think you need a high-end PC for studying computer science (hah!) and duly support me buying one, you're costing me real money here! ;)

        Hey, I needed a Pentium IV at 2.0GHz just to be able to get KDE 3's file browser to display my MP3 directory in under a minute.

        And if there were truth in advertising, it wouldn't be called Ximian Evolution. Instead, it would be called Ximian Continental Drift.

        www.glowingplate.com/dissent [glowingplate.com]

    • Re:GTA 3 (Score:2, Insightful)

      by squidfood ( 149212 )
      I work with high-end 3D visualization of scientific (climate) data, and we've called this "the Nintendo Effect" for at least 10 years. "The Nintendo Effect" just means that (since hardware is sold cheapo to make returns on games) we government scientists each year will be able to update to the "next-to-hottest" generation graphics system at prices affordable to gamers, e.g., $500 or less. And we do, too.

      "Er, that quake engine we all just installed was tax-supported investment in the hardware industry. We'll see returns on it. Really."

      • Right on (from another scientist using a Lintel system with a good video card and gigabit ethernet.)

        The significant corollary is our preference for quality OpenGL [opengl.org] cards in our machines.

      • I work with high-end 3D visualization of scientific (climate) data, and we've called this "the Nintendo Effect"

        For a moment there I thought the "Nintendo Effect" was the name given to some part of the global warming that's due to newer and hotter game machines:
        • Everytime Intel puts out a new processor the Earth heats up another degree

  • Well.. Not Quite. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by citizenc ( 60589 ) <cary AT glidedesign DOT ca> on Monday August 26, 2002 @02:47PM (#4142932) Journal
    It isn't gamers directly -- it's John Carmack, et all, over at id Software [idsoftware.com] who drive the high-end PC market; gamers have to buy the latest and greatest card just to be able to run the next id game. (Doom 3 is going to be HUGE, but it's going to require a beast of a computer to run.)

    • Re:Well.. Not Quite. (Score:2, Informative)

      by sllort ( 442574 )
      It's not just Id games. Check out The saga of CmdrTaco's quest to play Neverwinter Nights [slashdot.org] - he built the machine basically as a NWN kiosk, and had a lot of trouble doing it.

      • Don't forget EverCra^H^H^HQuest. One of the more recent patches, which enabled a player-run marketplace (The Bazaar) caused said zone to be crawling with people.... which causes the graphical lag to be insane.

        300+ people in a zone that was probably designed for half that ;-)
      • NWN ran just fine on my computer w/ a 1GHz CPU and GeForce2 video card, until the motherboard took a hit from a screw and I couldn't boot the system any more.

        Of course, just as the hardware gods cursed his chances of playing NWN by hitting him with just about every failure in the book, they cursed my quest to upgrade (rather than simply replace the dead motherboard) by deciding that a 300W power supply just isn't enough to run a P4-2GHz computer w/ a 64MB GeForce2 GTS, 2 hard drives, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, 3 fans, and SBLive w/ LiveDrive (480W did the job, when in doubt go overkill).
      • It's not just Id games. Check out The saga of CmdrTaco's quest to play Neverwinter Nights [slashdot.org] - he built the machine basically as a NWN kiosk, and had a lot of trouble doing it.

        (I want to replace the case fans with those translucent 2-tone red/blue case fans that I saw at LinuxWorld


        I was going to pick up NWN, but once I saw on the box that the "Optimal System Requirements" included a 2 tone case fan, I thought I'd hold off. I want maximum performance out of the games I buy.
    • Hmm the PC I built last summer will run it, albeit not with all the candy turned on. Athlon 1.2Ghz, 1.5GB ram, SB Audigy, Nvidia GF3 Ti200 128MB. I built it for around $600-$700 and from what I have read it will run Doom3. If you wanted to buy an equivilant machine from say alienware it would probably cost you well over a grand, but that is the beauty of DIY.

  • Duh (Score:5, Funny)

    by I_am_God_Here ( 413090 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @02:48PM (#4142940) Homepage
    CNN reports that "Gamers drive souped-up PC market". Good job CNN.

    Capt'n Obvious strikes again.
    • CNN reports that street racers drive the market for souped-up stock cars and aftermarket performance boosters.

    • Re:Duh (Score:2, Informative)

      by Oculus Habent ( 562837 )
      ** THIS JUST IN **

      CNN has exclusive information about the availability of high-end surgical equipment and the medical institutions that seem to be driving the market!

      Gee, people looking to push the envelope are, hmm, pushing the envelope?

      I know every now and then someone comes out with a brilliant study stating what many of us believe is painfully obvious (poor eating habits aren't good for you?!), but it makes you wonder if those performing them are just looking to have data backing the assumptions or are lacking the spark of reason.

      --
      Error Reporting Failu

    • That was pretty much my reaction. It's primarily (though not entirely) gamers who require the soup'ed up PCs.

      Since switching from coding to the business side of things, my computer at work is pretty much used for email, web-browsing and word-processing. MS Word doesn't run noticibly faster on my PIII work than on PII-266 desktop at home, nor my on my previous Pentium-90 home laptop. My typing speed just isn't getting any faster.

      Sure, a massive pivot-table in Excel can chew a lot of CPU-cycles sometimes, but overall my business use and most of my home use is mostly I/O-bound applications. (My computer is largely a typewriter and an email client.) I don't play games, so the tiny bit image manipulation and coding I do at home doesn't justify a anything more powerful.

      It's been 6 years since I bought my home computer, and so far the only upgrade I've needed (a larger hard-drive and a little more RAM) was for WinAmp and my MP3 collection.

    • Wow, that's about as good as two days ago, when my local paper put an article on the front page of the business section stating that greed played a part in the Enron accounting scandal.

      Good job, boys. You sure scooped the whole industry on that one! //////////////BREAKING NEWS///////////////
      President Kennedy has been shot! //////////////BREAKING NEWS///////////////

      In other news. . .

      Graphic artists drive the Wacom tablet market, nerds drive the Linux market, and morons drive the news media market.

  • Gamers or Games? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 26, 2002 @02:49PM (#4142955)
    It's not necessarily the gamers that drive the market, its the system requirements for games coming out. The target platform/system specs for the next generation of games keeps rising, forcing gamers to upgrade, else they're left out in the cold.

    Do you think that they're designing Doom 3 to run on a pentium 2?
    • I just went and played Little Blue Men [wurb.com] for the first time. Of course that one's a little older - its three years old. I don't think it would run on anything less than an XT with 64K of RAM. Yeah, that's not really a fair comparison.

      I suppose I should talk about a more modern game, like All Roads [wurb.com]. Oh wait - that one has about the same memory requirements. I guess nothing has changed in three years.

      If what you were looking for in games was imagination and inspiration, then you wouldn't need a new machine for it. Obviously that's not what is desired - people want better and better graphics. The gamers drive the game market.

      If this were not the case, then gamers would not buy faster computers, or better graphics cards. They would simply play the games that worked on their system, content to settle for fun instead of pretty and fun. After all, its not like there is a shortage of games, no matter how old your system is (and the examples I gave are case in point).

    • I have heard -- don't recall from where, though -- that EA has future version of it's games already developed, but unreleased because they're waiting for the target hardware to become readily available. (Perhaps this was is an older practice, though.) Certainly, I would think that fast-action video games would be easier to QA on slightly slow hardware.

      I think it's actually be the video card manufacturers and the games manufacturers working together -- these to market sectors drive each other, so it would make sense that they ensure their own future viability by working together.

    • It's not necessarily the gamers that drive the market, its the system requirements for games coming out. The target platform/system specs for the next generation of games keeps rising

      Last I checked, though, none of my games say aluminum case, plexi-glass window, custom paint job, or neon lights, which accounted for a good part of CNN's discussion of the subject.
  • pr0n and gamers have always driven the home market.

    NEXT!!! *grin*

    • Re:Tell us something we didn't know.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kisrael ( 134664 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @02:53PM (#4142986) Homepage
      pr0n and gamers have always driven the home market.

      heh, pr0n drives about every new AV (or just V) technology.

      Though I'd argue that pr0n is more dependent on bandwidth than CPU horsepower.

      But, I'm still pretty happy doing all my gaming on home consoles. Why would I want to get my butt kicked by 12-yr-olds with nothing better to do than hone their skillz all day? Cluster some friend's around a 36" TV and have a grand old time, and a much more affordable upgrade schedule.
      • require a 10Ghz system with a 600 gb array?? *grin*

      • Re:Tell us something we didn't know.. (Score:5, Funny)

        by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @02:58PM (#4143030) Journal
        Well, It is nice to be watching 10 porn videos, while ripping mp3s of the 70's porn style music, and chatting in #hotseattle on irc. Now Intel has released its 2.8ghz cpu, I can be even more productive!

        gotta make sure I post this anonymously...
      • >>Though I'd argue that pr0n is more dependent on bandwidth than CPU horsepower.

        Hey, it's not the bandwidth that counts, it's how you use it.

  • DUH!

    In other news, audiophiles drive the high-end speaker market too!

    Christ, I bought my new ATI card just to get shiny water in Morrowind... that's actually kind of pathetic, now that I think about it.

  • Umm... (Score:2, Funny)

    by drunkmonk ( 241978 )
    Well, yeah. I will officially give up computing when I need a two gigahertz P4 and a $500 video card to do a Word mail-merge...
    • If you use software that will be available, I give you 4-5 years. Windows 2008 and Office superxpplus will probably require a two gigahertz P4.
      The video card you need will cost you less than $100.

  • Taco has this filed under the right department (Score:5, Funny)

    by Compulawyer ( 318018 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @02:52PM (#4142974)
    ... Right next to "oxygen is necessary to sustain human life" and "enough beer makes ugly people attractive."

  • High End vs. Souped Up (Score:5, Informative)

    by aseh ( 310939 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @02:52PM (#4142976)
    If you read the article, it's really more of a fluff piece about people who build custom souped up computers that have neon lights and look like battle ships. More of a fringe market, as opposed to the consumers and businesses that actually drive the high end computer market.

    Kind of like the people eternally tinker with their cars, adding chrome trim to every possible part in an automobile. Interesting subculture, but not one that really has much of an impact on Toyota or Nissan.

    - Aseh
    • Interesting subculture, but not one that really has much of an impact on Toyota or Nissan.

      Four Words:
      Type R Factory Option

      OK, so three words and a letter....

    • Also noteable was that the market was considered mature. "It's not going to grow" was what one of the analysts said. While gamers may drive the custom-PC market, consoles are running the game market.
    • "not one that really has much of an impact on Toyota or Nissan"

      Here is a list of things that belie your assertion, Mugen, TRD, Ford Racing, Mazdaspeed, Nissan SE-R Spec V, Focus, Vibe/Matrix, Protege5...and I could go on. These are all things that these large companies are doing to respond to the desires of the import tuners or "rice boys" They are designing cars specifically for this "niche market" which is large enough that one could argue it isn't a niche at all, but a proper market segment.
  • I've heard a lot of good things about Falcon NW building solid gaming PCs, but I feel bad for people who have to pay their hugely inflated prices from something most avid computer people can do on their own; build a PC.

  • NEWS FLASH! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Golias ( 176380 )
    This just in, most of those who insist on graphics with high refresh rates and resolutions are running the most popular type of software that utilizes such technology.

    In a related story, most people who buy ink-jet printers use them to create hard copies of their electronic documents.

  • If you're playing multiplayer games a highend system is defintely a requirement. If you can't react as quickly as your opponent you're dead. This is espically true for FPS, but also goes into mmorpg's and the like where the person with the least amount of graphics lag/etc wins. People will take any little advantage they can get, from the fastest video cards/systems, to the best links. This isn't much of a suprise.
    • This will sound dumb, but I just replaced my PII 400MHz with a PIV 2.4 GHz and boy, my internet performance has increased a whole hell of a lot! I always assumed ti was the throughput of my 56k modem, but - just like NetMedic was trying to tell me - it was CPU cycles that were limiting my gaming experience!

      I am soo relieved! And now my son tells me he can win on the new computer, but not on the old computer as he can now cast spells in the heat of the battle.

      I learn something new every day, generally...

  • They forgot about Early Adopters (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Zen Mastuh ( 456254 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @02:57PM (#4143021)

    Early Adopters a/k/a Joe 6-Packs are the bread & butter of the high-end market. I'm sure many /.ers have dealt with this type who only need to run IE and Solitaire yet are buying new systems every six months because "this one gives me more megahertz".

  • Must be a really slow day to publish this kind of rhetoric for /. and CNN
  • From the article: "Games certainly are the most demanding (on computers), short of decoding the human genome," said Michael Gartenberg, research director at Jupiter Research.

    Hey, this should make the feature list for Quake 7! Frag your opponents, then analyze their gibs in realtime for the likelihood of having developed genetic disorders (had they lived, of course).

  • I thought I bought a $200 graphics card to run eXcell!

    Seriously though, I think that this is one of the big issues keeping Linux from multiplying rapidly on the desktop or at home. I mean it's great that Linux can interoperate with disk shares and do all the backend net service stuff like DNS, LDAP, etc. But that doesn't make my friends want to migrate to it. Where are our games? NWN has clued in, now if only Star Wars Galaxies, UO, DAOC, and EverQuest would figure it out!

    -Runz
  • Bush's comment about the way to prevent forest fires is to cut down the trees. [doh]
  • It was reported today by reuters that most of the reported news is written by news reporters. Asked why this was not obvious, one news reporter replied "I haven't read the report".

    The study also mentions that most newspapers are read by subscribers, and those that purchase newspapers at the news stand. Secondary causes of newspaper reading included finding a rumpled one on the train, and stealing an extra one when someone else purchased one from a machine.

  • Newfangled gizmotronic gobbledygook (Score:3, Funny)

    by IIRCAFAIKIANAL ( 572786 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @02:59PM (#4143044) Journal
    The specs on Kevin Atkison's latest computer could just as easily be for some newfangled street cruiser: Blue neon light tubes, Corsair XMS 3200 DDR memory and a GeForce 3 video card, all wrapped in a shiny aluminum Lian Li case with a clear plastic side window for easy viewing.

    I guess my grandma is writing for CNN now...
  • Of iMacs...when some people I know bought them just because of how they looked, not because of what the computers were actually like. I don't see why anyone would need blue neon lights and a clear case like that...

    Also, unlike fancy looking cars, fancy looking computers don't get you women.
  • Here I was thinking that people upgraded their PCs to run the latest version of Windows. :)
    • That's gotta be a close second. At least in terms of CPU/RAM/disk. In terms of video cards, when a 32 MB AGP card can be had for $40, who besides a gamer needs anything higher? Even the CAD geeks get along quite well at 32MB.
      • You can squeeze out a little more performance with more memory on the graphics card. Also, games that come out in the future will use all that memory. Never mind that you wouldn't be caught dead using a two year old video card when those games finally come out...
      • Hehehe you must not have very demanding CAD geeks, mine use the boards with 256MB frame buffers and like 128MB of DDR primary video ram. They also tend to get new dual CPU workstations with the top of the line CPU's every 12-18 months. Basically if they can shave a couple minutes per operation off they can do twice as much work, and when they are being payed mid 6 figures it makes sense to buy them a $10-15K system once a year or so to keep them productive.
    • I recently loaded NWN and was forced to download the latest SP for Windows before I could play. Yeesh. Overall, it is a symbiotic relationship -- the games push the envelope on what is currently possible driving the hardware and software to go further. New hardware and software drives games to again push the envelope on what is now available.
  • For some reason I thought it was playing solitaire...
    It is! My Geforce4 card is so fast, I can finish a game in 0.7 seconds!
  • "Gamers Drive High End PC Market"

    But, but, but... what about those adds on shop-at-home TV channels that keep telling me how much faster, better, etc. my dial-up^M^M^M^M^M^M^M web browsing experience will be once I buy their state-of-the-art faster-than-a-speeding-bullet PC?

    Are you sure that only "games" will run faster on my new high-end PC but not browsing?!!

  • Comment on Commenters (Score:5, Informative)

    by Coplan ( 13643 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @03:28PM (#4143238) Homepage Journal
    I read through all the comments that are posted right now that havn't already been moderated below my threshold (which is set at 2 for the time being). If I read yet another spoof like "audiophiles drive the high end stereo market" and so on, I'm going to up my moderation threshold again.

    If you READ the article, you'd realize it isn't really about the Mhz, the Megabytes and the Refresh rates. It's about the "Hot Rod" appeal. It's about the guys with clear cases, the guys with neon lights, and the guys with flames painted on the sides of their cases. All you would have to do is click the link and see right there in front of you a picture of a clear acrylic computer case. Logic would therefore lead me to believe that the average person tries to get their comment posted to /. before reading the article.

    Anyhow, I enjoyed the article. While it wasn't anything new to me, it is a niche culture that has turned their computers into center peices and art. This is the generation that loves the I-Mac, and the same generation where the PC Counterparts want to have cool looking cases too. These are the people keeping Alienware and Thermaltake in business. And while a case fan might be essential, one that has brass grilles and neon lights are not. If you read the article, you'd comment on that, not Mhz and GBs.

    How many of you guys are shouting RTFM to the non-geeks that bug you? Maybe we should be shouting RTFA!

    • Dude, did you read the article?

      They mentioned that the guys that trick out their cases are also the guys that buy a $400 video card.

      I compare them to audiophiles because both are willing to spend several hundred extra dollars for a minimal increase in performance and both like to invest time making their systems aesthetically appealing.

      You should see some of the sweet setups that some audiophiles have done in their cars and homes - pleasing to the ears *and* eyes.

      High-end niche markets are full of hot-rodders - computers, cars, audio, video, cyclists, skaters, etc - these guys always push the envelope so it's obvious that these guys push the industry in new directions.

      That was my point, but obviously I should have pulled out the crayons for you.
      • My point was that it wasn't about the essential hardware market per-se. I agree with your points 100%. But the article very briefly mentioned the correlation between the $400 video card and the computer case made to look like a troop transport. There is a correlation, but I believe the article to be more about the non-essential hardware.

        Your point is well taken, and again, I agree. But it's pretty fair to assume that a UGO driver is not going to be painting his car with flames, putting glass packs and a super charger on his 3-cyl engine. It's also safe to assume that the average Web and Solitare computer user won't be putting windows with neons and digital hard drive coolers into their computers. It's still the computer market, but its a niche market. Thermaltake doesn't deal with the average user, they deal with a small percentage of the computer users out there. The use of said hardware is interesting. And THAT was my point.

  • ...but this was published by CNN, a general media outlet, which makes it an interesting news item. Anytime something that *we* think is priviledged (even obvious) information is reported by major media is significant to some degree. This information may not be obvious to Jane Homemaker who uses her iMac to share photos of the new baby with her parents, or to Joe Schmuck down the street who's still writing socialist manifestoes on his TRS-80. Leave your mom's basement once and a while -- there's a whole world of people out there who are DIFFERENT FROM YOU.
  • Read some of the articles at Sirlin.net [sirlin.net] on competitive game design.

    The gist is that the best games, although accessible to a wide audience, cater to the gamer by rewarding his time and interest with an even higher level of gameplay.

    A game where the boundaries of experience are hard and fast die quickly. Great graphics. Cool storyline. But no replay value. And here we are talking about replay value in terms of multiplayer. The Quakes, Starcrafts, and Street Fighters of the world.

    You can see how this is the same with hardware. The more you invest... in tweaking, prodding, learning... the more you can get out of your machine. The better the performance and the more rewarding of the experience. Sure, 99.9% of the population will never do that to their machine... but they will follow where the gamer has gone.

  • Hmm... anybody else not inspired? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @03:41PM (#4143333) Homepage
    So maybe I'm showing my age here, but a painted red computer case with a great gaping hole in the side and a blue neon light does not inspire me to drool about performance.

    I'm much more interested in the specs -- an SMP Alpha or Sparc machine with gigabytes of memory, 64-bit SCSI RAID-5, DVD-RAM for removable storage and a fast pipe to the outside world is much more interesting to me than a single P4 with 512MB memory, IDE hard drive, 56k winmodem and a $2,000 paint+watercool+roundcable job.

    Anyway, when I think 'fast computer look' I don't think something that looks like a Pepsi vending machine, I think more along the lines of those old Thinking Machines setups or even just your basic sun4 pizza box.

    Damn, I am showing my age. I should have kept my mouth shut.
    • Hot rodding is about showing off. It's hard to show off a sweet hardware setup (even with a viewport).

      Sure, I can have a sweet car. Or I can have a sweet car with flashing lights around the windshield, hydrolics, a massive stereo, etc.

      I personally am like you - spend money on the inside, who cares about the outside.

      Some people are into that sort of thing though :)
    • "an SMP Alpha or Sparc machine with gigabytes of memory, 64-bit SCSI RAID-5, DVD-RAM for removable storage and a fast pipe to the outside world is much more interesting to me than a single P4 with 512MB memory, IDE hard drive, 56k winmodem"

      These are home machines they are talking about, not university workstations. Try not to be so elitist.

      • These are home machines they are talking about, not university workstations. Try not to be so elitist.

        I can't help myself - I've got a dual P3 from 1999 and a dual athlon with a gig of ram racked in my basement. No neon, though.

      • Interesting.

        The G4 desktops.

        Dual processor G4. Can ship with 2GB of DDR. You can get them with Ultra160 SCSI. They ship with DVD-RAM, DVD, CD-RW, CD. They have Gigabit, 100Mb and 10Mb ethernet. Also optional 802.11b (11Mb).

        So, dual proc, SCSI, DVD-RAM, fast pipe.

        And yet, it's still a home machine. Well, an expensive home machine. But still technically a home machine.

        Justin Dubs

  • toys need not be reliable (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @03:41PM (#4143334) Homepage Journal
    Although this article is obvious, it is also interesting. Toys can drive development of technology. For instance, it is said that some pre-Colombian civilizations had toys with wheels, but no tools with wheels. Toys are a great way to develop technology in a much more forgiving setting.

    Likewise, video games can drive computer technology. Though most people have commented on the lack of a business needs preventing the adoption of bleeding edge technology, I think it is more a matter of reliability. After all, if a computer crashes or makes a slight rendering or math mistake in you game, it is not going to affect anything. It is not like making a mistake in a paycheck or bill of lading. The consequences are miniscule. Likewise, if a computer crashes every couple hours in a game, as long as the game is saved, there is little productivity loss. And of course, if the buggy Intel chip were limited to games, as it should have been, we would have not had such a powerful outcry.

    We see this with the original Mac. It was a very capable machine. I would spend all day and most of my night on it programming, analyzing business data, and writing. It would not crash, and would not make mistakes. The problem was that graphic technology had not advanced enough to make the machine both reliable and inexpensive. We can absolutely thank gamers for our cheap GUI devices.

  • that gamers drove Yugos because they spent all their money on PCs
  • This has been going on for a LONG, long time. I remember a comment years ago (in PC Magazine? can't recall the source) that Wing Commander drove more sales of 486-class machines than any other software of the day.

  • You mean you're not getting the new 3D rendered 1024 polygon phong shaded playing cards with full radiosity?

    You poor deprived soul...

  • media is the LAST to realize a fact. I wonder who slapped a reporter with this information. It has been common knowledge in the industry for 3 years now. BTW I just got an ATI 9700....WOOOOHOOO it ROCKS..Playing NWN in 1600x1200 with NO lag locally and only the expected net lag in multiplayer. I ran UT with the max goodies and consistently ran in excess of 150 fps. Very impressed initially, let's hope ATI keeps up the drivers....
  • Demanding gamers drive the high end consumer computer market? Gee, that's fucking amazing. I thought those people who just load up Mozilla and OpenOffice were the one's who were creating the demand for GeForce 4 Ti4600's and Radeon 9700 Pro's, along with 2+GHz Intel/AMD chips, and 4+GB of RDRAM/DDR-RAM.

    Really? Ya don't say. Next, they'll be telling us that the Hollywood follks who make movies like Jurassic Park drive the high end systems in the professional world. And that the people who sequence the human genome drive the high end in supercomputers. That's unbeleivable.

    Seriously, I thought that the average user who browses websites needed all that power to handle the pop-up ads. Or that your avg. hormonal male needed that much power to look at porn.

    Next thing they'll be telling us that avid downloarders of music, movies, and porn are what's driving the high end in broadband connections.

    Amazing insights from CNN.
  • If the PC is viewed as a game console that sits on a desk and happens to have some additional capabilities beyond gameplay, that has a real market impact. If the main application is games, why not just build game better consoles?

    PCs and game consoles used to be viewed as complementary products, but they're becoming direct competitors. This has major implications for the PC industry. Essentially all business PCs shipped in the past few years have more than enough power. Only Microsoft bloatware keeps the office PC industry alive. Most businesses don't want to upgrade beyond the Windows 2000 level at all. That market is getting to be like the typewriter market - units are bought only to replace existing ones that wear out. Thus, most further sales, if any, must come from the home market.

    Gamers have been driving the home PC industry for two or three years now. An implication of this is that PCs can be viewed as a special kind of game console. The XBox is, after all, a PC in a different case. The main difference between the XBox and a PC is much stronger digital rights management in the XBox. This should tell us something about where things are going.

    And it does. The newest generation of PCs are a lot more "locked down" than anything seen previously, with TPM and Windows XP moving towards an environment in which you don't do anything the content owner doesn't want you to. Remember, the XBox is already there. It's worth noting that, unlike previous generations, none of the current generation of game consoles has been fully cracked. Nobody has succeeded in running an "unauthorized" game on an unmodified XBox, Playstation 2, or Nintendo GameCube. Despite the fact that that's legal.

    So what seems to be coming is "consumer PCs" that behave more like game consoles and less like open systems. They'll be easier to use, harder to mess up, and thus more reliable for the average user, just like a game console. That's the end result of gamer dominance of the PC industry.

    Any questions?

  • that our desktop PC's will never be any faster than the slowest computer in the field (we do mostly Unix development -- and the compiles are all on the server end...) We have been doing this for so long -- that I have also neglected to upgrade my computers at home. I don't if or when this Retro "PII / Amd K6 500" thing will ever catch on with you kids -- but I have noticed that more performance tweaking and memory leaks get caught by people who develop and or test on lower end machines.

  • Excellent! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ZanshinWedge ( 193324 ) on Monday August 26, 2002 @06:42PM (#4144505)
    I'm glad that I can get this kind of important, breaking news from slashdot, since my subscription to "Duh!" magazine ran out a few months ago.

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