It is my opinion that the 1050, and the 560 2GB on AMD side, are the bare minimum you should consider putting in a new PC, but they make a solid upgrade choice for people with cards back in DX 9 or 10 territory. Expect a 1050 to be decently playable now on a variety of games, but to begin showing its lack of grunt in new releases pretty rapidly. If your thing is older games, the 1050 will deliver a great experience for a low cost.
I would not recommend this card for anyone devoting their system to only gaming or only HTPC uses. If you need a gaming card go for the 1050 Ti, it isn't much more. If you need a card to throw into an HTPC that you plan on using for only streaming or emulators, the 1030 or 550 make more sense (if you are outputting to a 4k or high refresh rate display, for 1080 displays integrated Intel graphics will likely be fine). However, a system doing a little of both would be a good fit for the 1050
I would recommend this card to anyone looking for a cheap upgrade from a GTX 750 Ti or lower, or R7 260X or lower. Anything stronger than those and you can probably hold out longer and save more to get a 1060, or whatever NVidia's next generation mid range card will be.