PC users I think just need to be a little more patient. If you want the latest and greatest, RIGHT NOW of anything, youre gonna pay. I dont care what it is.
Anything when it first comes out is totally expensive, that's what cracks me up about pc users when theyre moaning about it. It's basic economics, if they can find people to pay it, theyre gonna sell it to ya.
Me personally, I generally wait a while. Get games and hardware that have aged a little, and I'm not talking about Dwarf friggen Fortress for crissake. Wait 6 months, wait a year, there's tons of older games you can play in the meantime. Right now you can go online and buy FEAR, Doom III, Oblivion, etx, all "Second Coming" games that were wallet-busters at release time for bargain prices now. Go play the Spellforce games, or hunt down the IceWind Dale super edition or whatever with all of em in there. Same with hardware. Yeah, when youre buying something that's damn near military-grade technology when it's released, youre gonna pay thru the nose for it.
Wait til the next wave hits, then buy a nice card that still totally kicks ass. I'm still running a 7600 GT, and while it'll prolly get eaten alive by Crysis, I'd expect nothing less. Yet it eats alive most older titles, I have no problems. I'll get a new card for a couple hundred sometime in the coming year, pick up Crysis Gold Pack with expansion for 19.99 somewhere online as well in the future, and wonder what everyone was caterwauling about. I'm not saying that I never buy new stuff, but I certainly expect to pay the price for keeping up with the Joneses!
Patience, young grasshoppers
by the way
Spellforce II @ GoGamer 9.90 Uncle Sammy keepin an eye out for ya there, example of good "old" games you can play on a system not military-grade ='.'=