How does electronic technology so reliably get better every single year? How is there always new products with seemingly no cap to ability to develop them? (Thinking video game consoles, GPUs, CPUs, etc.)

Question

I don’t really understand how it’s realistic that every single year new GPUs, CPUs, consoles, TVs, etc. are being released with new technological advances. How is there not a year where it’s like “welp, actually our tech right now is advanced as we can figure it out”. Do they hold onto some features to save them for future releases?

In: 1

Answer 1

The video games market has been growing some 7% a year in revenue these last few years. More money in the industry means more and better games. Plus the hardware keeps getting better which allows them to do more. And the field is advancing over time. Basically, we are learning how to make better and better games. And there are basically infinite possibilities, just like drawing a picture, so we are exploring more of them.

As for the hardware, it’s mainly that the transistors are getting smaller. The transistor is the brain of the computer, and as they shrink we can add more. So computers become more powerful.

As others have mentioned it takes years to develop all this stuff. What you are using today was in the works years ago.