Though graphics by themselves do not a good game make, it is silly to say that modern games that do have higher quality graphics are all in the looks only category. I far from a new gamer, and my favourite game is still an old one (1986-7), but with games like Silent Hunter III (just to mention one good looking and good all around game from the many that exist today), I find it very difficult to find an older game (of the exact same category) better in anything else than sentimental value. Sure I love Silent Service, even the original Silent Hunter perhaps, but are they actualy better than Silent hunter III? No, not even close.
Then there are games that were not that great to begin with, for example Bob Winner, I don't know if you know the game but it is an old (86 I think) game, one of the first 3 games I owned, and though it has some interesting ideas, the game is basicaly, crap. I still love it though I wouldn't play it.
Regarding the size/footprint of games. They are big, but, since to run most of them you need an equaly fast cpu and graphics card, plus ram, you probably already have the HDD to install the game to, since it will not even run on older pcs. The only time that I remember having problem with my HDD space was when I had my first HDD (for a PC, not in general) it was a 500MBs drive and it became inadequate very fast.
Games that need more than 1 GB of space exist for several years now, one that I remember right now is MS's Train Simulator, which needed IIRC 2.8 GBs back in 2001. So if you were lucky to have a 20GB drive back then, you immediately "lost" 15% of it for one game.
Now, games have not increased in size that much over the last 5 years, there are still plenty of games with less than a gig of hdd footprint, and rarely go over 2. (that is from a list of 100 PC games released last year I doubt you will find anything but a minority of them requiring 2+ gigs of space.
I am lucky enough to have recently bought a pc with 2x300GBs space, and together with my external drives I reach 990GBs of space. I am not the only one.
No, hard drive space is from my point of view, not the main threat to pc gaming. Microsoft is. Their future release of Windows Vista has caused me fear down my spine with the "good" DRM implementations and the Big Brother attitude. Combined with the usual (anyone here doubt it?) constant patches of problems with the OS that will exist, I am very seriously considering ending my PC gaming as soon as they stop making mainstream games that run on XP. An Apple computer (for video editing), and perhaps a PS3 (Already own a PSP) will become my gaming solution..
Enough of this from me.
