Reason that I think it will become more expensive: As the general Desktop PC demand goes away/dies out, companies are not able to achieve scale in manufacturing products such as power supplies, desktop processors, desktop RAM and etc. Which means increase in unit cost. Reason that I think it might not: The R&D cost spent for smaller and faster components that goes into mobile devices can easily be leveraged for PC gaming components as well. Reducing overall R&D cost. So what does everyone else think? Will we see an increase in per unit manufacturing cost? Will it be offset in decrease per unit R&D cost? (Public Poll)
We will see a hybrid of consoles and PC's. Consoles end up being yesterdays technology early in the release. They simply can not push the power of a good gaming rig. The only way to achieve this is to offer upgradable systems in the same manner PC's do. The upgradable hardware platform will need to be very limited to allow cross platform compatibility. The console will be heavily app based to allow you to play your bejeweled, candy crush, facebook and all of that other nonsense that doesn't need a true operating system. For those who do need a full OS, it can allow you to run a full operating system to do video editing and number crunching.
Only components that differentiate a Gaming PC from a regular PC are- Video Card, Ram, better ventilation/cooling, and a bigger Power Supply. I'd say that these components are not dying out anytime soon. PC gaming will still be around for a reasonable price ( you can build a rig that is better than an xbox 360 right now for under $500)
I haven't followed it super closely, but it does seem like it is a little tougher to get great new performance gains in newer GPUs (CPUs to some degree as well, but they don't seem to matter as much these days). They're already pretty complicated, and with heat/size considerations, there's only so much you can cram into a chip (and it is getting harder to reduce chip size). On the flip side, there is some decent gains in improving efficiency in hardware, so perhaps making these components more efficient (combined with new software to take advantage of this), we might be able to still see good gains without creating chips with 20 billion transistors (or whatever). Making these components more efficient could lead to less heat/power requirements, meaning you can scale down on your cooling, power supply, etc. Mobile space can help some, though I'm not sure to what degree. Also, one thing to consider is if game streaming becomes a big thing. It is still in its infancy, and I'm pretty skeptical about it (especially for PC gamers who like maximum fidelity/performance), but if that takes off and works well, you can get a "gaming" PC for pretty cheap. I think I just said a whole lot of nothing.
I built my last PC four years ago. Never again. If a new game can't play on laptops, I just won't play it.
May I ask why? Actually my point was not the gaming PC market dying, but the impact from the regular PC market shrinking. For example (completely fake numbers and scenario), the machine to make the i5 chips cost $1 Billion to build, but we know we can expect to sell 1 Billion chips, then the cost of machine per i5 chips is $1 per chip. Now if the demand for regular PC drops significantly and now we're only expecting the sell 100 million chips, then cost of machine per chip is now $10 per chip and that cost will likely pass on to the consumers, making cost of Gaming PCs higher. I think there will be some gains just from figuring how to make stuff smaller and faster due to the shift to mobile computing. The thing I'm worried about is that those gains would be offset and then some from the fact that it's not as economical to make the PC components with regular PC market shrinking. When you think of the money needed to invest in the plant, to build/upgrade machines, the opportunity cost of not using the capital to make mobile components and etc., I'm not sure if PC gaming can keep it's current price points if the general PC market itself becomes niche. Maybe the fact that we've seen a shrinkage in PC sales in recent quarters suggest future trend?
The next-gen consoles are nothing but HTPC with AMD APUs inside. Only advantage they have is the GDDR5 unified memory which works great for the APUs since they use system memory for the IGP. Hopefully, the Steambox comes to fruition soon.
I think a "gaming pc" will get more expensive, with the flip side being that mainstream pc's will become more capable... just a logical extension of what is currently happening with more powerful built in gpu's every year. The $50 card goes away, $100-200 card will be filled by older cards unless the manufacturer has yield/competitive issues, and the floor for a new video card will be $200+. Companies will gear towards the higher profit, super performance niche market. I think this continues until the server market stops pushing for faster and higher performance cpu's and goes whole hog into power sipping processors arm style. At that point, Intel and AMD will look at the shrinking PC market and the performance war will end at the consumer level. High end CPU's will go back to Cray type computing clusters and we'll end up with capable thin clients.
I don't know where you've been the last couple of years but this is exactly what's happening. Lower-end cards are being rendered redundant with any recent IGP from both Intel and AMD CPUs. This basically removed any low-end dedicated GPUs from the spectrum. Now, when you're talking entry level cards like the 7770 or the GTX 640, then you have got a point, but were sub-$200 cards anyways when they were released. 200 dollars would be mid-range like the 7850/7870 or 650 Ti/660 The GTX 780 is like what, $600+? Titan $1000? There's already a niche market and these cards are in it and no, it will not prove profitable when mid-range cards have good bang-for-the-buck status. They've already started with HP Moonshot blades.
Nice, man. After my first build quite awhile ago I've never looked back and re-build my rig every few years. It's easier today than 10-15 years ago, though.
