I just read that id's new Doom III engine will be so detailed that a GeForce 3 will only manage around 30fps when all the special effects are turned on and will need upto 50 processor passes per pixel. Given that we'll need something faster than a GeForce 3 and therefore more expensive to run the game, how is the average human being supposed to be a gamer in the future?
Are the software or hardware companies out to make a new segregated socitey, where the wealthy can have photo-realistic environments on their home PC, while the poor wallow in self pitty scrounging for parts to overclock their GeForce 2s to the limit? Or perhaps it's part of an even larger, more elaborate and hitherto unknown plot to create a race of super-reflexive humans, those who are capable of winning online games by predicting, 30 seconds before, the appropriate moment to shoot the get five headshots in a row from the one round through their ping of 500ms and their framerate of 0.2 FPS on the latest games. Perhaps whoever is in charge of the overpricing in the UK is trying to breed such a super race in order to fuel a future war. Seems ridiculous but then, so are the prices.

Just read that Doom III will require a MINIMUM of a GeForce256 strength card. Do they think we're amde of money. Or are we supposed to sell our body parts so that we can compensate for the loss of limbs by playing more realistic games. Do we NEED photorealism? Well yes, but I mean £350 for something that will jsut about do it!

It depends when it comes out, I suppose. Consider Duke Nukem Forever, which has to be the most enduring piece of vapourware ever. It's current minimum spec wasn't even on the design board when the game was first announced.
Hardware manufacturers love this sort of thing, though. At the moment, there's not much that your average 1GHz+ PC can't do, so there's not much call to upgrade. Microsoft will doubtless do its best with Windows XP, but even it might fail to be bloated enough to force an upgrade.
Alex