I agree with you and then I don't.
I agree that we need more competition in the video arena. Take a look at the CPU war. Prices have dropped exponentially, and speeds have been pushed higher and higher.
Now the part you lose me at is that we need to slow down the rate of advance. If anything I'd like to see it speed up.

There is still a LOT of room for improvement in graphics cards.
Nobody ever said that you need to buy the latest and greatest from NVIDIA. While the cost of their "high end" GPUs has increased; we have a broad spectrum of cards to choose from. (Something that wasn't the case a few years ago.) To make the point clear, the GeForce3 may be pricey at $300-$400, but the GeForce2 Ultra performs nearly as well in many games at half the cost. Then, there's the ATI Radeon lineup that costs even less and offers competitive performance to the GeForce2 GTS and Pros.
Another beneficial side-effect of the technology race in video cards is that we now have "low-end" video cards that would have made us drool back in the days of "3dfx rulez."
I agree that it is never good to have a monopoly, but NVIDIA still has some real competition. (Something that Microsoft lacks.) Ultimately, the onus of responsibility is on the consumer. If ATI dies off it is only because not enough people purchased their cards.
This fall, things are going to heat up with the impending release of ATIs next wonderchild. What should make things even more interesting is their (ATI) new deployment strategy.
Pitspawn (Jul 23, 2001 10:02 p.m.):
Dont ever count on the prices of nVidias flagship cards to go down to an 'affordable' price. For like 2 years now, nVidia have pushed the average price of a graphics card up to insane levels. I expect to see even more expensive graphics cards coming out by christmas that will not drop to affordable levels.
nVidia are going to sell their products for the absolute most that they can without loosing sales. Unfortunately this is the way it is. Personally i think its BS, I paid almost £400 ($650) for my card and I aint particually impressed from the difference between my GTS2 and the GF3. Sure quality has gone up but the drivers for the GF3 are frickin bugged like hell.
Some serious competition better hit nVidia soon or the graphics card will quickly become the most expensive component of a computer system.
Another bad thing about the graphics industry is that it is SOOOO F***ING FAST. Graphics speed doubles every 6 months. This is like ridiculious especially with the prices we pay. nVidia are becoming the next Microsoft, something needs to be done.