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Gamers Drive High-End PC Market

Posted by CmdrTaco on 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..."

6 of 294 comments (clear)

  1. Gamers or Games? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Gamers or Games? by PainKilleR-CE · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

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      -PainKilleR-[CE]
  2. They forgot about Early Adopters by Zen+Mastuh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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".

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    "What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
  3. Re:GTA 3 by squidfood · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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."

  4. Yeah, it's obvious to slashdotters... by arloguthrie · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...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.

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    Cheese it! It's the FEDS!
  5. Hmm... anybody else not inspired? by aussersterne · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    STOP . AMERICA . NOW