Seriously why did it take so long for games to get this right? Even in games as recent as Far Cry 3 there are scenes with a couple of the female characters where their bangs or ponytails just awkwardly sit there without responding to wind when they're running. It feels like a plastic wig was just placed on them. Same with every game released in 2009.

In Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite it looks like things are finally starting to change for hair physics, but why did it take so long? Is it really that hard to render moving hair in games?

I may be mistaken but I think in prince of persia from 2003 fara's hair would move when she ran, same with other old games.

Extremely. Not in terms of being able to handle it, but being able to figure out how to do it.