388
Entry level PCs costing less than $500 ‘will disappear by 2028’, research firm predicts
(www.videogameschronicle.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
388 points (97.8% liked)
PC Gaming
14088 readers
447 users here now
For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki
Rules:
- Be Respectful.
- No Spam or Porn.
- No Advertising.
- No Memes.
- No Tech Support.
- No questions about buying/building computers.
- No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
- No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
- No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
- Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The new entry-level PC will be a cloud-based thin client subsidized by collecting every bit of data it can about you directly on a Microslop server where you will have zero user choice.
You're not allowed to say 'Microslop' it's ILLEGAL!!!
Not now clippy... not now.
I'm this close to just quitting society and becoming Amish or something. Technology is just getting worse and worse. Maybe I could be Amish but instead of being locked in the 1800s I just stay in like 2007 when technology was fun
Technology keeps getting better and better; it is capitalism that keeps getting worse and worse.
Frutiger Amish
Yeah, I think one of the reasons the AI bubble hasn't popped yet is because it's being weaponized to remove consumer hardware from the market entirely. These companies want as much processing done on the cloud as possible so that they can control, monitor and mine data from every user.
They aren't weaponizing anything against consumers. They don't care about consumers anymore, they are irrelevant.
They think if they just spend more money they will win the AGI race and therefore the whole economy forever. Consumers don't factor into it at all.
Don't forget the rentseeking.
When you say cloud... I don't think people understand it is just a huge data centers. There are 288 in Canada, and ¼ of them are in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area).
We can't even get reliable broadband across the full US yet (Hughesnet still somehow has customers), i don't see consumer-VDI being especially popular any time soon.
They don't care. It's a cost-benefit analysis.
If 5% of users can't access a VDI because of poor internet connectivity but it means the remaining 95% create an extra 10% of annual profit, they will just tell that 5% to get fucked. Individuals don't matter to them; only aggregates do.
They don’t need to stream you a desktop
They just make all their UIs browser based, all the storage cloud based
The own everything, they rent it to you, and you can be cut off if you refuse to be exploited.
Capital’s wet fucking dream
They don't care. They will literally throw people under buses at this point.
Real
I will go back to MB of ram from a new company that wants to fill the gap at any cost and will not be surprised if that happens.
I ain't fuckin doin it
Lmao, no.
They don’t want users using this, it would be a mess. M$ would need to provide consumer facing OS support if they ever tried it, which is something they’ve vehemently refused to do for decades. It would also lead to their OS being blamed as the problem when the internet is having issues. Not to mention the consumer market isn’t really where they get their revenue from when it comes to OS sales.
They want enterprise subscriptions. End of story. Enterprise subs mean there’s an enterprise IT team involved, to at least a bare minimum extent.
They aren’t likely to want end users on this pretty much ever. It’s virtually all downside for them.
Unless they outsource their OS support to CoPilot.
Except that won’t be able to get over the main hurdle of “bad internet means bad OS”.
I'm CoPilot can come up with a great answer to that. /s
You have a point. But as someone else said, if X% loss of users mean Y% more profit, if could still be worth it for them. (The loss of users here are those with bad internet. The rest of the userbase with good enough internet would continue as normal.)