Folks who are whinging about the prices should understand something: you are not obligated to buy it. Generally, you will not be considered "inadequate" and have "sand kicked in your face" if you don't have the most expensive gaming viddy card available. Do you lament that [insert pricey automobile] exists just because you cannot afford it? If you do there is something wrong with you. Check your head. I think it is fantastic that there is a wide range of choices. It's even better if it drives competition and lowers the price of parts with higher performance, features and quality.
Right now I cannot justify spending more than $150 on a viddy card because none of them are particularly great, partly because the full power of the high-end ones does not improve the experience enough for the extra $$$. The software has to catch up and the industry is held back by that mutual dependency of one always waiting on the other to advance.
Remember peeps, the goal is realism. We are not anywhere near that. We are still in blocky cartoonland. The viddy chip will be the most important part of the drive towards realism for the forseeable future. If you cannot justify $500 to play some cheesy game like Quake 3 faster that is understandable, but how many of you would drop $1500 for a viddy card if it offered a pseudo-real visual experience? Prolly a lot I'm a thinkin'. Prolly a lot of people would drop $5000 to really be immersed in a game.
Of course, that will require advancement of displays, controls, voice recognition, bandwidth, and so on too. Bottom line: if you like games don't complain about better stuff just cause it's out of your range. It's a free market and self regulating price-wise. Okay, so that wasn't the bottom line.
If they build it and people do not come, well then they will lower the price where possible. I'm sure they have lots of brainy actuaries with charts and graphs and slide rules calculating what the market will support.
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