The interesting thing about this is that people are now stuck with whatever PC they had when the prices suddenly shot up. In the past there was always a hardware adoption curve, where some people had the newest stuff, other people waited for it to get cheaper before they bought it.
In the past, if a game company was developing a game that was scheduled to be released in 2 years, they could look at what hardware people were using now, and estimate what people would be using in 2 years. Graphics and gameplay that was possible on game studio machines running the latest hardware would be too much for home PCs when development at the studio started. But, by the time the game was ready, home machines would have caught up and people could experience these amazing graphics at home. Now, I assume game studios are going to have to re-think things and assume that most people at home will still be playing on the old gaming PC they built before the AI price apocalypse.
The interesting thing about this is that people are now stuck with whatever PC they had when the prices suddenly shot up. In the past there was always a hardware adoption curve, where some people had the newest stuff, other people waited for it to get cheaper before they bought it.
In the past, if a game company was developing a game that was scheduled to be released in 2 years, they could look at what hardware people were using now, and estimate what people would be using in 2 years. Graphics and gameplay that was possible on game studio machines running the latest hardware would be too much for home PCs when development at the studio started. But, by the time the game was ready, home machines would have caught up and people could experience these amazing graphics at home. Now, I assume game studios are going to have to re-think things and assume that most people at home will still be playing on the old gaming PC they built before the AI price apocalypse.