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> I can still run just about any modern AAA game at the highest settings.

AAA games mostly target the console. Look at GTA5, which isn't even out on the PC. Most AAA games will run on a PS3, which came out in 2006, and has 512MB of RAM (combined system / graphics).

That said, there's a point of diminishing returns - making games look much more realistic will take obscene amounts of resources.

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I expect there to be a system requirements explosion for PC games now that the new consoles are right around the corner and AAA game developers can finally target much higher specs.

An interesting opposite is the previously mentioned Planetside 2. It was initially released for PC only, and was a resource hog. Now they're working on bringing it to the PS4, so they're having to do an extremely aggressive round of optimizations to make it run decently. The optimizations will get a lot of testing on the PC version (think it's hitting the test server next week). PC players will benefit as a result of the console port.

Planetside 2 is a weird example, though. I don't think there will be many games that have a 1-year+ delay from landing on PC before they hit consoles.

GTA4 was actually a sore spot for PC gamers. The game was not optimized, so it ran like crap if you didn't have a higher-end set-up.

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