PookaMustard: In twenty years, this good infrastructure may have taken the time to exist. The corporations have enough money to throw at building several decent PCs to make up for the current specs, they may have enough power to tell the companies developing for them to OPTIMIZE THEIR GAMES for their own PCs, etc. The question remains if the internet companies will actually make streaming less of a worry with new internet plans that are fast enough for streaming and unlimited to encompass this streaming. Given all these hurdles are taken care of (which aren't hard with the amount of money the companies pushing game streaming hold), it's not far off to think that the worst is coming. And while you may be OK with them giving options for how to experience games, they typically just want one option to prevail and the rest to die out, naturally that option is the one that works in their favor, not yours. Hi streaming.

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Peak? Heh, I see no end. Game sizes will continue rising and rising. When 8K is now a trending term, companies will do 8K textures, and when it's 16K, they will do 16K textures. Some have the foresight to ship the game in 1080p or less textures then offer the higher resolution textures, some don't. Or some add excessive amounts of content to their game. At launch, GTA V was like 65GBs on PC. Now it's over 80GBs. No graphical improvements happened between then and now. All that happened is the Online portion being crammed with stuff. By the way, you can't opt out of receiving updates for Online if you're playing the game for its Story Mode/singleplayer. Nadda.

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Linux would have proliferated more by then, maybe enough to dwarf the Mac OS market share, but I fear that this New Linux would be nothing but Valve's own playground. Thus, if you switch from Windows to Linux, you probably changed from Microsoft to...Valve. Yeah, like hell.

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And in twenty years later, what will be mocked isn't what is mocked today. I do hope I am wrong, but there's nothing indicating that people won't laugh at those few old farts who think lootboxes are the evil of games. Here we are, years later after Steam happened, if you argue about DRM, you get weird looks. If you argue against clients, you're the old fanatic who's obsessed with his icon filled desktop (even if it only has the icons to This PC and Recycle Bin only). Complaining about microtransactions? Can't pay $5 to get that cool weapon? What are you, a freeloader?

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Some people don't have debit cards, but have cash. Or you're a kid and can't legally get a card. Gift cards are great for this scenario. Gift cards are also good for gifting, as their name implies, and in this case, it doesn't matter if you have debit or cash.

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By then, Epic will have enough sales going on organically as a result of their store. Their exclusivity deals would have boosted them to be even better than GOG at selling stuff. By that point, they need not to worry much. The developers would either release on Epic only WILLINGLY (no exclusivity deals) in order to make full use of the %88 cut, or simply just tell people on social media to buy on Epic, it supports them MOOORE and you can't make your beloved developers less rich, riiiiiiiight?

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The fun part is, even if it got to mass production and was ridiculously affordable, 1TB would not bring back physical PC games. They'll at best be used for a cinematic push, or as a cheap yet densely packed storage solution, but PC games? Nah, they're dead, go digital or go bust.