Computer gaming categorized under "sports"? I guess that makes me a bit sportier than I thought I was.

I think 'arts and entertainment' might be better :-)

BTW, Dawn of War is superb.

Real Gamers hardware.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/X850_Series.html

Real Gamers cooling problems solved
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/copy_of_copy_of_Others.html

Real Gamers Memory
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Corsair_XMS2.html

Real Gamers HDD -Western Digital Raptor
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/westerndigital_sata.html

and all to play
http://www.eagames.com/official/battlefield/battlefield2/us/screenshots.jsp

Keeping on the cutting edge of gaming certainly requires a significant and on-going investment in hardware. Most of my guild start saving for their next graphics card as soon as the latest one is installed.

Everybody who's sees the Dawn of War FMV intro for the first time says "COR!" at exactly the same bit.

Starcraft Broodwar is still the best.

It's beyond dispute that gaming has driven the markets for graphics boards and sound boards for the last 10+ years.

Perry, oh damn - you changed it! I was just about to cancel my gym membership.

The intro movie is much more impressive straight off the CD (speakers turned up, of course). &*?% compression.

Dawn of War looks impressive, but I've never been any good at RTSs. I always end up getting flustered with far too much going on at once. Battlefield 2 on the other hand... Well, I'm rubbish at that too (not enough time to practice), but it's amazing how much fun getting blown up over and over again in such a diverse variety of ways can be.

Slightly more on topic: spot on with the theory about what drives computer hardware sales. Gamers are clearly willing to part with a *lot* of cash if games can make as much money as Hollywood from a smaller audience.

"...(Video) games are likely to drive a larger market than the movie industry, real soon now."

Conspiracy theory of the day: movies based on video games are designed/sabotaged intentionally to be stinkers, as negative advertisement against movies' biggest competitors. "Hey, of course the movie was bad, it was based on a VIDEO GAME! And video games are TERRIBLE compared to OUR wonderful product!"

(Of course, this also explains why video games based on movies often stink as well. Coincidence?? I think not!)

Yes, it's been clear for a while that games are the only reason most people need to upgrade their computers. I'm not sure it's true in our house though.

I work on an open-source compiler for the language Dylan. Building it takes about 2.5 hours on the fastest computers around now (either 3+ GHz Pentium 4 or 2+ GHz PowerPC or Athlon or Centrino). When I started working on it in 1998 it took my then machine (the very fast for its time 200 MHz Pentium Pro) 24 hours. Many types of changes can require a complete rebuild to test your last half hour's work before you go on to something else. Speed is at a premium.

My partner is a developer working on the open source KDE desktop environment. That takes even longer to build.

Of course, once we have this fast hardware, we can play games if we want to. But I'm pretty boring. I just like to run realistic flight simulators, such as X-Plane.

For every thing *else* that I do with a computer, my old 1998 vintage 266 MHz Mac laptop is perfectly fine. It's aging and unsupported and something could die at any time so I recently decided to pick up a second near identical machine (except 300 MHz) to act as spare parts. I see no immediate need for a faster portable, and they don't make screens and keyboards like they used to!

I develop my web-apps on a 400MHz machine running SQL and Windows 2000 Server.

If it runs well on that, then it runs well.

I would guess that PC Gamers are
A) Older
B) Richer
C) Better educated

Than consolers. There is one more motivation for a PC over a console. One day I'll write a gr8 game (can someone invent a drug so I need NO sleep at all)...

Put me down in the 'need burly machine for open source builds' category. I never, ever seem to have enough ram, and couldn't care less what graphics board I've got. I guess CPU speed, cache size and bus speed/width matter most to me after ram. But sound and graphics cards? Bah.

Bah. I remember the inbetween period where a gamer was someone who played RPGs or miniature wargames like the Warhammer 40K DoW is based on. Oh, and DoW is great -- it is very, very faithful to the tabletop game. I think I'll go play it some more now. I can't wait for Winter Assault and the addition of the Imperial Guard.

Winter Assault - seconded. I must admit, I'm rather bored of DoW now. Bit too easy after a while. But looking forward to Winter Assault.

Really looking forward to Age of Empires III though.

Neal: DoW is far better with the 'DoW Rebirth' (Link) mod installed (you ARE registered for the Relic forum, right?)

Amusing stuff but computer games are essentially electronic mazes. When you've gone left twice, shot that, turned right once, picked up more ammunition and rescued the Thrall of Electronica or some such name you've, erm, done it.

Oh well, on to the next big game. Turn right twice, shoot this...

Even though I'm involved in the industry, I play computer games very little, but I have no games in my posession that match that description. Shooters of various sorts don't attract me at all, but even I see that as a gross caricature of a very narrow genre. It would be hard to play more than two games, or ever to venture near a shop selling them, to have as limited an impression as that comment betrays, anon.

Anon, that may have been true of first person shooters at one time, but current real time strategy games are a very different beast.

Especially when you are playing against 7 live opponents on line.

Games not only drive sales, they drive the majority of the technological innovation as well.

Games drive technological innovation? Hmmm, they used to say that about porn on the net...

Perhaps you would illustrate exactly how Games drive technological innovation. Certainly there is some small measure that graphics cards manufacturers build cards for the next generation of computer games (although Doom 3/Quake 4 has a 512Mb gfx requirement which has still not yet been produced, even one year after the game was finalised) but only a small measure - most graphics cards are built for professional applications, not for computer games. Software applications such as SoftImage, Maya etc. derive only a very small income from the computer games market, so no drive to technological innovation there either.