This just shows that computers have reached such a level, where they are beating consoles both in price and performance. Again, my original assumption stands, once you have a machine that is hard to improve, that machine might stay around for a while...
Poor argument.
The PC / Console relationship has always been cyclical with regard power, performance and price.
The gen-1 console comes out as a games-only machine that is cheaper than an equivalently spec'd games PC.
The PC tech improves and prices drop until you can get a PC cheaper than the gen-1 console.
The gen-2 console comes out that undercuts a similarly spec'd games-PC.
Cycle, rinse and repeat as necessary.
At the moment the PC gaming environment is so far in excess of the X-Box and PS3 in terms of graphical ability that those arenas are developing other ways to draw in punters, such as the motion sensors etc.
But the next gen of consoles will put them once again ahead in the cost/benefit debate for many people.
Plus until they introduce a decent mouse / keyboard interface for the consoles... well... that's another issue.
PCs are always up against it in terms of graphics requirements for games: with the GFx tech improving all the time, PC games increasingly push the boundaries. It is a constantly moving beast.
Consoles, on the other hand, are stakes nailed firmly in the ground. ANY game designed to run on the PS3 will run on every PS3.
But a game designed to run on PCs may not run on PCs that are only 6 months old... forcing updates / upgrades.
In the desktop PC market the games market is determining the power and specs of PCs.
The increasing requirements for games raises the power available for developers of other software, such that they no longer need to be as clever in their design, or efficient. They can become far lazier in their programming, because machines are now so fast to compensate.
When machines were all 8-bit, running on 64k of RAM, games and applications pushed the boundaries by being efficient and superbly written.
Now the programming is fat, because there is so much more resource available.
Anyhoo - the way I see it is that todays PCs should of course be able to last 20 years if all you intend to do is the same thing you are doing today.
Cars last 20 years or more for the same reason.
But they wouldn't do if the specs of the fuels available constantly got updated: e.g. old cars requiring the old leaded petrol can no longer operate for the majority of us (leaded petrol no longer really being available), even though they do the same things that existing cars do.
Also with increasing speeds, power, RAM etc come new ways of doing things. And this is what forces change - as people move to these new ways, and no longer support the old ways.
I am not sure we can imagine what our PCs might be capable of and be used for in 10 years, let alone 20 years, to be able to say that current tech will remain useful... unless we only want to do the same things in the same ways.
