undefined> Downloading movies over the internet ultimately fell between the cracks outside of piracy. Most people stream films and TV now, and people who want the extra quality tend to buy a Blu-Ray disc rather than download from iTunes (can you even still do that with modern shows?)

I definitely know people who didn’t get an HDTV until 4K screens hit the market, and people still buy standard-def DVDs. Hell, they’re still outselling Blu-Rays close to 20 years later. Calling HD a dud is questionable, but it was definitely not seen as a must-have by the general public, partly because that shit was expensive back in 2008.

I feel like both of these are wrong.

streaming is just the next step to downloading movies. Downloading movies was never really a “thing” and this is really just some tech writer not understanding the term streaming. Netflix had just launched in 2007 as a streaming video service and this is the hyped thing they are referring to. They are not referring to downloading movies on iTunes or whatever. If they are, then my argument is no one ever hyped that up, especially not in 2008.

This is also for PC, not TV. https://web.archive.org/web/20081216002805/http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ shows that 1024x768 was the majority followed by 1280 x 1024 Sadly I can’t pull stats from earlier because Valve decided to use Adobe Flash for these stats until 2017. But just in 10 years https://web.archive.org/web/20180331131102/http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey 1080 HD became 75% of the PC gaming base. HD certainly should have been as hyped as it was. It’s become the absolute standard. If you don’t have at least 1080 HD monitors you are far behind.

Also I wanted to address this:

The Wii’s novelty wore off fairly quickly (about the time Kinect happened), and it didn’t have much of a lasting impact on the gaming industry once mobile gaming slurped up the casual market.

It absolutely did have a lasting impact. It changed Nintendo forever. It’s seen as one of the best examples of a Blue Ocean strategy working. It’s why we had the Wii U and thus eventually the Switch. Which in turn influenced the Steam Deck. Wii also directly influenced it’s competitors to create the failed Kinect and failed Playstation Move. It was the best-selling TV console from 2006 to 2013 until Playstation 4 launched which quickly was replaced in 2017 by the Switch becoming the best-selling console.

Lastly, this article was fairly wrong and clearly written as a fluff piece without substance. If you look at the original magazine https://issuhub.com/view/index/1138 they don’t even go into detail or expand on their thoughts. It’s a fluff page.