About a year ago I gave up upgrading my PC to play the latest games, Crysis was just a rumour and Stalker had actually been released. It took me too much time to find out what the latest technologies were and far too expensive for me to buy the parts. Although, I did enjoy both the research and the putting together.
So I bought myself an Xbox 360. I know, I know, there are many reasons why PCs are better than consoles and vice versa. I am not going to go into that debate. I do like the simplicity of a console and the (if you don’t get a red ring of death) one off payment for the console hardware. Again, I know, I know that there will be a new console out within 5 years etc etc.
However….
More and more Gaming Companies are turning to Server-side rendering. Basically, instead of your PC doing all the maths and graphics processing, the company pay for large servers to do it for you. The servers then give you a video stream of the game. Like an interactive film, if you will. With the ever increasing bandwidths from Internet Service Providers, this can be dealt out in two different flavours: Standard Definition and High Definition.
LivePlace are releasing a competitor to Second Life, that will allow you to connect via any internet device and experience a photo-realistic world. See this article posted by TechCrunch
OnLive on the other hand are hosting games on their servers, offering a (possibly) subscription service. All you do is buy the box (“cheaper than a Wii”) and any TV or PC can play your favourite HD quality games such as Crysis or F.E.A.R. See Gizmodo Article
Fantastic! Is this a possible end to the endless upgrading of PCs? We’ll have to wait. It will all depend on the price I suppose.
Posted by chrishuttonch 
