A "PC enthusiast" to me means someone who likes to customise and push their hardware to the limit, in order to get the best value from it - which includes anything from midrange components to the most blisteringly fast available.
Anyone rich enough can buy a shit hot GPU and plug it into a socket - they're not necessarily the people most passionate about the platform.
The PC will always remain the experimental platform - whether its advanced tech, new paradigms and ideas or niche/independent gaming - just by virtue of the platform being free and unrestricted.
There are still a lot of people willing to pay for that. You wont necessarily see those sales at retail but online as well. Most of the PC games I get are through steam, independent develeloper websites or other digital distribution sources, which wont necessariy show up in sales stats.
For example theres a racing sim called rFactor, which has been around for years now - the idea is that you download the main engine from the dev website or their mirrors, then "enthusiasts" can develop any content they like for it, which the end user can download for free and use to race anyone else with it online. Took a while to get off the ground but its a cult phenomenon at the moment.
That freedom comes at a price though - cost as well as a lack of standards. Eventually someone had to make a website for rFactor in order to give users more info on all the mods and user reviews in one place.
Consoles will always be the more popular choice for mass entertainment, but the test bed will always need to exist.
Im looking forward to next-gen consoles too - but I'm hoping for something new not only in terms of performance and cinematics, but interactivity as well. When will we get proper virtual reality back - along with Craig Charles.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OkzF56tGYSg (I know I posted this before but its so good, heh)
<message edited by choupolo on Dec 25, 2008 15:45>