It's a bit on a tangent because it's about hardware rather than OS choice, but the next few years are going to be a stress test on how much people value PC versus the cash-value of components increases, and what happens to the numbers of people entering the market, staying with older systems or upgrading (or replacing/complimenting with a console). Someone saying they think it's worth a lot is different to opening their wallet.

One aspect I think will be interesting is to compare what happens to attitudes with prices changes in more affluent markets like North America or Western Europe compare to how PC has been approached in other markets like Asia or South America.

I got into PC gaming in ~2009 primarily because it is so much cheaper than console. Steam sales and Humble Bundle allowed me to buy so many more games for less money.

The initial cost upfront was higher than a console but if you want a lot of games it ends up being worth it.

And those games do not die with each or every other generation of hardware. Almost my entire Steam library still runs on my latest machine.

Yeah, I was happily surprised to be reminded of that when I set up my NixOS Jovian box that I “consolified” by having it boot into Gamescope and the SteamOS interface.

It’s plugged into my TV, with a wireless controller, and I have direct access to around 800 games immediately.

There are consoles that don’t even have 800 games in their entire library and I have 800 I can play whenever I want, some of which I purchased almost two decades ago.