Rage, John Carmack’s latest baby - which has spawned countless papers at SIGGRAPHs and new fangled datastructures (sparse voxel octree - I’m looking at you) is almost here and the demos are looking to be amazing.

. I’ve seen no game that, in this realistic style, looks so good and has a landscape so rich with visual splendor.

Considering that PS3 is getting screwed up more and more and Carmack himself is’nt very sure about the PS3, I think people will be pushing for an upgrade for their computers. Next year is going to be pretty exciting for PC gaming with DirectX11 (on Windows 7), StarCraft 2 and Rage.

I think the netbook market is clear indication enough that the market is shifting towards thin and light and I’m interested in seeing what nVidia and ATI have in store for us.

Intel with its 32nm Arrandale chips is pointing towards a 18W TDP processor - which I am sure are going to be in the next gen macs (rather than the 4 core Clarksfield - cos they are power hungry and we cant use 4 cores efficiently yet).

More and more questions over at various notebook forums ask for a 13-14 in laptop with good gaming support. Hell, make the DVD drive optional as well (I can install Linux and Windows 7 from USB sticks). Just dont repeat the bad experience of nVidia chips overheating. A couple of my friends had that experience with their Dell XPS gaming laptops and now all of us want to go ATI - even though nVidia is so much better on Linux support.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for next year’s upgrade window - I think Doom3 and Half-life 2 spawned sufficient upgrades. I think next year will as well.