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  • Re: Will high RAM prices force gamers into the cloud?

    From Spalls Hurgenson@spallshurgenson@gmail.com to comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action on Sun Feb 15 10:52:16 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


    On a not entirely unrelated note:

    Game publishers are taking note of the high price of RAM and are doing
    the only sensible thing: marking down the hardware requirements of the
    new games.* Whether the games themselves are actually being optimized
    to run with less RAM is arguable. Certainly publishers have pushed
    unrealistic hardware specifications in the past (Win95 with 4MB on a
    x386/20MHz springs to mind ;-). And it's not like I don't have a
    /little/ sympathy for the developers; up until recently, RAM prices
    were low enough that they could start a game expecting everybody would
    have twice as much RAM by the time the game shipped, so why not be a
    bit careless with your allocations?

    But those salad days are behind us and now the publishers are
    scambling to make their games sellable. I mean, they COULD take the
    loss and just demand the programmers spend a year or two optimizing...
    but it's easier just to rewrite the marketing specs. Sure it might
    give the company a bad name and cost them sales in the future... but
    when has a CEO ever looked past the next quarter anyway? ;-)






    * examples here https://kotaku.com/lego-batman-recommended-pc-specs-ram-prices-2000668982


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  • From phoenix@j63840576@gmail.com to comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action on Sun Feb 15 14:46:31 2026
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

    Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

    On a not entirely unrelated note:

    Game publishers are taking note of the high price of RAM and are doing
    the only sensible thing: marking down the hardware requirements of the
    new games.* Whether the games themselves are actually being optimized
    to run with less RAM is arguable. Certainly publishers have pushed unrealistic hardware specifications in the past (Win95 with 4MB on a x386/20MHz springs to mind ;-). And it's not like I don't have a
    /little/ sympathy for the developers; up until recently, RAM prices
    were low enough that they could start a game expecting everybody would
    have twice as much RAM by the time the game shipped, so why not be a
    bit careless with your allocations?

    But those salad days are behind us and now the publishers are
    scambling to make their games sellable. I mean, they COULD take the
    loss and just demand the programmers spend a year or two optimizing...
    but it's easier just to rewrite the marketing specs. Sure it might
    give the company a bad name and cost them sales in the future... but
    when has a CEO ever looked past the next quarter anyway? ;-)

    This is deplorable, but maybe enough gamers get angry that they stop?
    --
    pBkHHoOIIn8
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