this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2026
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Honestly I don't think it matters so much...
I think we reached peaked IT few years ago.
Nobody needs (that's the crux term here, need, not "want" or "desire" or "wish") a bigger hard drive. It's the same way nobody needs an 8K TV and they they aren't sold. Why?
I'm glad you ask, it's all connected! If you stick to "just" a 4K TV, because you have normal human eyes, then the content you need is "just" 4K so a movie is just 2GB or so... and thus you don't need a larger hard drive, thus not CPU, GPU, memory, etc. The current setup is simply "good enough".
I can already hear the steps of that ONE person who edits 360 8K videos for National Geographic preparing to argue "actually...!" and yes, they ARE right. Some people, professionals, DO need super high res, super high framerate, super high everything ... but that's NOT your average consumer. You average consumer STOPPED upgrading because they need to. Most consumer who still upgrade mostly do it because of habit, because they get coerced into it (e.g. MicroSlop Windows 11) but not because they genuinely need to.
So... yes I "wish" I had better everything, including hard drive, but the truth is we "peaked" in terms of actually required spec a couple of years ago, same for phones that are now the same equivalent small slabs.
My point is I'm wondering if this AI bet will have deeper consequence for the industry overall with the realization for most people (again, please before you reply : your average consumer, the person who browse the Web, watch a video of a TV series, play some games for fun, NOT a professional!) that the hardware they have TODAY is good enough.
Yeah because nobody does IT innovation anymore. It's all been put toward enshitification.
Then the prices of hardware TODAY are good enough. How the fuck does it not matter that prices are skyrocketing across the board for EVERYTHING both old and new?
I'm not arguing about prices. I wish prices would keep on going down but that's just my preference as a consumer. It has nothing to do with my argument though.
The problem with your argument is that while you can buy the lower res movie because you don't need more and if a lower res doesn't exist you can still watch the high res on your low res TV, you can't choose to buy a lower install size game or software.
When you buy those, the size it is is usually what you will have to install to use it, and if you can't buy a large enough storage to install it...
I'd be curious to know if game size is increasing over time. My intuition is that we also peaked at 200GB installs. There are bigger games but on average I'm not sure we installation size keeps on growing.
Get your point but most 4K encodings I see are ~10-20GB.
Another interesting metric is piracy trends, checking a popular show, e.g Fallout and its latest episode namely S02E05 :
... and 2160p gets 50 seeds!
Of course that's just 1 datapoint and it'd have to be replicated (maybe it was released after the other versions, maybe it's a show people do NOT want in high res, etc) but it's quite a big gap.
I only grab movies in 4k anymore, and that's even reserved for those worthy of it (LotR or OG Marvel for example). I used to grab series in 4k but the size consumption is not worth it. The same goes for movies but you need to consider that one season of a series is equal to four to eight 4k movies in size depending on the episodes in the series. I used to grab 720p series for those not typically watched, but since H265 was introduced I find many releases where 1080p is similar and sometimes smaller in size to a 720p release.
It's already having deeper consequences, if their purchases affect RAM and storage prices, then it means it yields results better than half a year ago.
I agree about "good enough". I felt that "good enough" moment in year 2006. In year 2009 even more. Some people remember Amiga Workbench of year 1999 stage as "good enough".
I don't think it matters which of these is closer to the equilibrium, we'll learn empirically.
But I'm feeling better that it's having a hard power redistribution from consumer sector to datacenter sector, that's not a bad thing, because most of that consumer sector was based on the bullshit you are describing. It didn't need to, but all the potent avenues of said sector's development were strangled by RIAA, "protect the children", "there are wrong people saying wrong things in the Internet" and other such pressures. And also by Steve Jobs and his idea that you don't need ergonomics or usefulness, just a sci-fi look and a brand, I think that'll take years to rectify, even though people are slowly getting tired of the "touchscreens are the future, physical buttons are fossil" narrative.
That bullshit drain means that we'll have a better, healthier consumer sector eventually. And perhaps in 10 years or so something interesting will be happening there. Life is about change and movement.
You realise massive capacity hard drives were never meant for the average plebian, right?
They were always aimed at people with Certain Requirements and businesses. So saying that Average Joe ain't buying a 28tb hdds isn't a gotcha, it's the norm
(Meanwhile my workplace is buying them like crazy. building a new DAS)
Right, sorry maybe I got a bit excited by my point. It wasn't about this HDD example in particular, it was about the broader consumer hardware trend.
I don't know if it's just because I've grown a bit over the last 15-ish years, but a computer also seems to perform better for longer now. My 1070 I bought in 2016 (I think?) was clearly starting to lack behind with newer games after 4 years. My current 3070, which is 4 years old now, just keeps performing in new games.
Interesting, I'm not sure if there is a metric for it, maybe Steam most popular configuration could be used then see if it's average time does it indeed last longer? My intuition is it might indeed but I didn't check the actual data.