Think logarithmic.
It certainly isn't going to be a mainstream solution any time soon. But it can become a 'mainstream' computer gamer solution in the not too distant future.
Consider the situation a year from now when the 6800 series is being released. With console hardware static for at least the next two yeas and the continued migration of developers to programming for consoles first and computers a distant second, there will be a lot of unused power in the 6850/70 cards.
On the developer side, from what i've read, including eyefinity support is relatively painless and easy to implement ... ? If so, why not include it with their computer ports and a cheap 'eyefinity supported' checkoff on their product. For computer focused games, one might expect dx11 and eyefinity support to become the rule. Who's going to be releasing a major computer centric game a year from now without them?
When one has a GPU that already contains performance headroom for the forseeable future, what's the next logical upgrade that makes use of that unused performance potenial while simultaneuously providing a much better and expanded gaming experience? It starts small, but as the implementation improves, performance headroom expands and monitors become ever cheaper, a gamer specific 'perfect storm' scenario can occur and that eyefinity set-up adoption that starts slow starts to grow in a logarithmic manner ... until that niche market is saturated/matured ~ onto bigger and better monitors, but this will also 'bleed' over into the mainstream segment, and even the more casual gaming crowd with the free green will start to adopt it, and that also will be expanding, albiet at a much slower rate.
True, compared to the whole it will always be a niche market, for that matter that is true for the entire discrete GPU market, but that doesn't mean there isn't some serious money to be made or eyefinity won't become a compelling solution in the niche it operates in. Consider those developers currently restricting eyefinity support on their multiplayer games because it gives 'too much of an advantage'. As multi-monitor adoption continues to grow, those restrictions will become unviable and be lifted. When that occurs all those gamers still playing on single monitor set-ups will have a compelling reason to upgrade to a multi-monitor set-up. The same dynamic will play out across the entire computer multiplayer arena.
And eventually across the hard core console gamer segment and beyond as one might expect multi-monitor support will also be included in the next console hardware cycle considering what graphics capability will be available for implementation two to three years from now and that by then a sizeable established base of gamers with a multi-monitor set-up will be in place and eager for a console that supports it.
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