> I wouldn't expect to play many games from this year on any computer from 2009.

I run many, many, many recently released (and not-yet-released) big-name 3D games on 5 [0] and 6 [1] year old hardware.

Console-first development has done terrible things to video game design, but it has let cheap bastards like myself get enormous mileage out of our gaming rigs.

(BTW: Cities runs juuuuuuuuust fine on my "ancient" PC. :) )

[0] Radeon HD 6950

[1] AMD Phenom II X4 955