Digital Mutterings

Like most other industries in this economy, the PC market is taking a hit; sales are down across the board with some companies taking less of a loss than others. I think there a several factors a play here, one being of course the economy, I also think another factor is Windows 7, and one that I have not heard anybody comment on is games. I'm not going to go into detail as far as the current economy goes, I think everybody knows it's bad.

Any time you get close to a new Windows release, PC sales take a bit of a dive with people holding off purchasing a new system so they can get the new OS preinstalled, which saves them from having to purchase the upgrade, and installing it, also it's easier to get manufacturer support for a pre-installed OS. The release of Windows 7 will occur in the late fall (Oct. 22 2009) So sales will pick up for the back to school season, as these systems will qualify for a free upgrade to Windows 7 if It's not already installed. Having worked for a large electronics retailer while in college I can tell you that students are only part of the picture, it seems that everybody comes in to buy a new PC in the fall.

    Having been around PC's longer than I care to mention, I can tell you that in the past that games were a driving force in faster and more powerful hardware sales. It's actually a vicious circle, as new games come out they require faster hardware to run them, or to run them with all the eye candy turned on. I can remember planning hardware purchases around game releases, so I could take full advantage when the game it came out. The only problem now is that PC gaming is not nearly as big as it used to be, with consoles taking a large part of the market share, so allot of folks including myself are not upgrading hardware as often as in the past.

    With all the above factors in play it's not surprising that hardware sales are in slump. I don't see the PC game market improving anytime soon, you'll have the occasional title that gets a lot of buzz, but I think for the long term, consoles will be the gaming platform of choice for most people. Almost everyone I talk to uses their PC for getting online/work/e-mail, and those things don't require allot of computing power to get them done, so I think allot of people like myself are hanging on to older hardware longer because it works. I have had my current system for about 3 to 4 years, and it's still plenty fast.