In Japanese daily life and culture, the computer is treated more like a piece of work equipment or utility, rather than for recreational use.Is this some meme or information I'm too non-japanese/weeby to understand?
As such, there isn't a strong PC gaming culture, nor a significant retail market for PC components to customise setups optimised for gaming, nor the need to purchase higher performing PCs.
If all you need to do on a PC, is to browse the internet, write documents and watch movies; then even a 10 year-old workstation-grade desktop will still do the job well today.
Many visual novels in 2013 were still doing graphics in 800 x 600 (4:3 aspect ratio) resolution, while the Western world has already adapted to using full HD monitors at the time.
In general, the Japanese are very mobile phone literate (which had started way before the smartphone), but are mostly computer illiterate by Western standards.
This is unfortunate, because this had caused a stagnation in the pace of technological development and innovations for the consumer market, that they were world leaders of during their peak in the 1990's.