PC

The PC or Personal Computer is one of the only two platforms available at the start of the game. It's also the only platform to last the entire game, and remains the cheapest to develop for throughout. Although its early popularity decreases for a few years with the arrival of consoles, the PC has no licensing costs and maintains a fair market share for the entire game.

Unlike other platforms, the strength of the PC lies in it being non-proprietary and having an open architecture. Any company can develop components for the PC and any company can assemble and sell PCs. There are no licensing fees or royalties for either hardware manufacturers or for software developers. As a result, new technology is easily added without having to release a new platform (although to a far lesser extent in the case of laptops). When one component manufacturer goes under, others are there to continue on. This explains the low development cost and the long lifespan of the platform in the game. Many new computers can be added with Modding.

Evolution
At the beginning of the game the PC looks similar to the IBM XT (picture below) but as the game progresses, the PC becomes more modern.



Trivia

 * The first PC is based primarily on the IBM PC 5150 produced from 1981-1987.
 * The second PC's specific model is difficult to pin down - it appears to be a combination of various Packard Bell and Compaq models from the mid 1990s.
 * The third PC is based on the Dell Inspiron - specifically, it appears to be based on the Inspiron 560s and 580s models.
 * The fourth PC is probably not based on anything but it resembles an gaming-PC tier alike.
 * Adventure, Simulation, And Strategy is the best PC genre