February 06, 2012, 03:44:55 pm
I wonder if personal desktop computers will become very expensive in the future as the mass of the market is drawn away from them towards more easily carried and less expensive personal devices that are supposed to make human beings lives easier.
Will they go entirely extinct?
Unless something special happens I do not think so.
First of all I will never be able to fit a 32 inch screen into a 4 inch phone or 12 inch tablet.
Second of all the processing power vs power usage is not nearly good enough to get powerfull GPUs. They can make the GPU faster but it's much more diffucult to make it faster without using more power. Currently a beefy GPU uses 400 Watt. It will take a long time before they can make GPU's with the same performance which use little power so they can run on batteries.
Even if they succeed to make really efficient GPU's then imagine what they can do with 400 Watts by that time. So unless there's new technology for creating chips or new battery technology you will always need a desktop for heavy duty work.
For the general consumer I think tablets will be enough and they will use a dedicated game console for heavy gaming. More serious home users will use a laptop or keyboard with a tablet.
So, I think computers will always remain a mass market but maybe it will be restricted to professional usage.
I see no reason why PC gaming will stick around. If windows 8 runs on tablets and your tablet or xbox can run the same games why would you pay more for a PC? From the manufacturers standpoint it's also better if people stop playing PC games. There is not nearly as much piracy on tablets and consoles and this is what matters to the ones making the games and making the money.
I think that computers in general (phone, tablets etc..) will become more common in the future and at some point you will be able to get a decent computer for 10 Euros or so. Everything else will also be cheaper although not as cheap as 10 Euros.
By the way... if they can figure out a way to do networking so fast that things like Onlive work really well I think almost ALL software companies will change their software into an online service. This is simply because with an online service there is no piracy (and it has some benefits to the users too

).