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Gamers Drive High-End PC Market
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..."
It isn't gamers directly -- it's John Carmack, et all, over at id Software 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.)
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.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
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.
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.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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.