The consumer PC is about to change from being the main course of consumer computing into one of its appetizers. This change is due to a significant shift in consumer buying patterns, an American presidential election fueled by false concerns about media violence, and three or four hundred million dollars worth of console marketing for next generation products from Sega, Sony, and Nintendo.

Let's get the politics out of the way. Quite simply, and I am sure this is more apparent to people outside of the US than to those on the inside, the US presidential elections encompass almost every shade of the political spectrum in nice, carefully packaged boxes that are gathered by the handful of candidates that have the money to get a campaign off the ground. As a result, they are confusing, and lightweight, at the same time, but always fascinating for what should be between the lines. This is due to the extensive amount of cross country sprinting done by candidates raising money from an unending number of special interest groups. As a result, presidential hopefuls tend to say a lot of things that are geared towards both keeping them out of controversial topics, and at the same time, making them look pioneering to whomever the audience happens to be at the time. Hence, the use by President William Jefferson Clinton of the term first person shooter in a press conference on June 1, 1999. This was the first time probably anyone has heard a US president utter these words, and it was done in conjunction with the launch of President Clinton's plan to look into the way violent games are advertised, among other gripes to do with the entertainment industry. Of course, President Clinton isn't running for office next year either, but his Vice President, Al Gore, is, and his wife, Hilary Clinton, may be looking at a Senatorial run in New York. In short, it seems that first person shooters may now be replacing the effects of smoking and second hand smoke in the US public's consciousness. I kid you not. Read the press reports and judge for yourself.

The second issue I'd like to address is the shift in consumer buying patterns. You can see it in the reviews of Celeron systems on the pages of Tom's Hardware, and a thousand other Web sites like it, and you can look at the figures given below. Consumers are shifting the sweet spot of PC computing from an average $2,000 system to one that is closer to a $1,000 system, and ever downwards. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does point out a couple of trends: the first is the consumer infatuation with Web access as the primary reason to buy a PC, over and above anything else, hence negating the need for the most powerful multimedia computers; secondly, PCs cannot continue to price themselves at such a high premium in the consumer market so as to be compared unfavorably with lower cost alternatives such as consoles. While, in actual fact, there may be few alternatives to a PC, the perception that there are better things coming is having an impact on buying patterns.