MikeB on 09 January 2009
@ HappySqurriel
Demo Scene is not about pushing hardware to its limits as much as it is about finding a limitation in what you're doing in order to give the appearance of more advanced visuals
Visual appearance = Visuals. The artists explore boundaries and seek workarounds for limitations, at least that what the Amiga demoscene was like. To show off your coding talents, imagination and creativity.
Anyways, the primary reason why the ever changing hardware approach of the PC became the dominant approach is because hardware is cheap in comparison to the cost of optimizing most programs
The x86 IBM compatible became dominant, because IBM had a strong relationship and good reputation amongst businesses. Its awful multi-media (and thus gaming) abilities were looked at as non-important (maybe even useless), managers didn't know the potential of multi-tasking (like copy and pasting between programs), better multi-media power (like audio-visual feedback), etc.
Because people used IBM computers at their work, many when buying a home computer would pick an IBM compatible Personal Computer so they could do some work at home as well (nomatter far more advanced software existed for other systems). Later marketing played an important role, if there was 1 Amiga ad, there would be 20 PC ads from various different companies, etc.
Much better results were reached on the Amiga (both multi-media and professional software) than on 80's MSDOS PCs.
