what are your views on the latest news in gaming...........?

Question

Via to start India LAN gaming push
Personal PCs that are affordable, claim
By Ritesh Gupta in India: Monday 10 January 2005, 19:28
VIA Technologies, Inc, a developer of silicon chip technologies and PC platform solutions provider, is set to promote local area network (LAN)based computer gaming in India. The company has worked on a PC configuration, which is going to be what it claims is a unique offering for India.
Via opened its Affordable Computing Lab at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai in April 2003 in a bid to make personal computing accessible for people.
On the latest offering, Ravi Pradhan, country manager for Indian operations, Via, said: "We are going to launch this PC later this month. We havent launched such gaming PC with PCI Express motherboard and PCI Express dual graphic card anywhere before. Apart from gaming, this product will have a superior graphic output, which I would say would be a Ferrari in comparison to other cars".

Pradhan says Via is yet to finalise the price but it will be in the range of US$1000-$1300 depending upon the memory and other parameters.
"Since this is a high-end product considering the Indian market socio economic class demographics, we are targeting 20000-30000 units mainly from metropolitan cities by the end of this year. The high-end configuration would include AMD Athlon 64 3.6G, 1GB RAM, VIA K8T890 PCI Express chipset and ATI dual Graphics card X800XT PE," said Pradhan.
Recently the company has organised a three-day gaming competition in Mumbai. Over 2500 gamers across the country participated in the competition. Via claims to be the first company to take this step in promoting gaming in India and intends to conduct such competitions on an annual basis.

"World over computer gaming is becoming a very popular tool even in the field of education. The amount and variety of learning games that can apply to the learning classroom are practically unlimited. The games can range from simple quizzing review sessions to simulation games, group research competitions and online treasure hunts, just to name a few of the successful approaches of education," said Pradhan.
Via plans to push its new product by making it an integral part of students' routine or computer usage.
"The more students are allowed to express their natural skills within a supportive environment, while having the opportunity to learn from others and engaging themselves in a friendly competition, the more the learning of even the most complicated conceptual topics becomes a truly rewarding activity," he said.
VIa is also heavily promoting PCI Express. Formerly known as 3GIO, and overseen by the PCI Special Industry Group (PCI-SIG), the PCI Express standard is intended to .....

........consolidate and replace the existing PCI and AGP buses. An active member of PCI SIG, the industry group responsible for the development and deployment of the PCI and PCI Express standards, Via claimed it is working hand in hand with its industry partners, including graphics vendors, motherboard manufacturers and OEMs to help ensure a quick and seamless move to PCI Express.

Answer 1

Good news for gamblers.

Answer 2

I suppose this is good news for gamers in India. Will this really be affordable for the average income family in India? It seems odd to talk about "accessibility" when only an elite few will be able to afford to have one of these computers in their homes.