[citation][nom]aggroboy[/nom]Problems of PC:1. Whatever horsepower advantage PC has gets swamped under layers upon layers of compatibilities and wrappers, just to make it work with billions of driver/OS/version/hardware permutations. John Carmack himself mentioned the hoops he had to jump just for one GPU vendor.2. A stable hardware platform like PS3/X360 for many years allows for developers to heavily optimize for it. That trumps the moving target that is the PC.3. PC Piracy. Really bad. Whatever claim you make about Xbox360 piracy, at least they can move millions on that platform.4. Terrible value for money. PS3 was introduced in 2006, and only in 2008 an expensive PC can play the same games today.5. Deceptively small, disproportionately vocal and polarized market.[/citation]
Partially correct on all points, except for point 4, which isn't really relevant now anyway (it's 2012). Nowadays, consoles look pitiful next to even modest desktop computers. The current crop of consoles desperately need to die in order for the gaming industry to finally progress into the second decade of the century.
I will never be a console gamer because the games are too expensive, the environment too sandboxed, and after release the performance is quickly outstripped by the PC platform. I'll take a small hit in plug-n-play goodness for the benefits of the PC.
However, developers won't. Which explains why game development has, for the most part, stagnated as the old console hardware strangles everything. Small wonder there is a rise in Indie games trying to push things in interesting new directions when the big studios are just releasing swathes of generic lookalike rubbish like Crap of Duty 8.
Graphics might not be the be-all and end-all... but seriously, right now new consoles wouldn't hurt. UE4 looks gorgeous.