[dgfitz]

> I want plug and play, but consoles have their own problems and limitations.

How so? A console is literally a gaming PC.

I can see the point of “need multiple consoles because game X isn’t on console Y” or “I’d like to play an RTS/MMO that isn’t on a console” but since you mentioned gamepads that point mostly dies.

I also haven’t ever had a PS5 or Switch controller lose link from a console because someone walks or stands between myself and the console.

[slightwinder]

> How so? A console is literally a gaming PC.

Consoles are walled gardens, while PC is an open park. On a proper PC, you can choose anything from everything, while consoles are very restricted in terms of software and ability. I mean, think about modding, running other software besides the game (browser, (voice-)chat, etc.), having special hardware like a mouse, keyboard, capture-card, a second screen... Consoles are again slowly those things, but it's still not the same as a proper Gaming-PC.

[slipperydippery]

PCs are different for a few reasons, for me.

One big part's the library. I can still play Steam games I bought when the Gamecube was current. My Gamecube games do not work on the Switch. My Dreamcast games certainly don't! The library for the PC is enormous and generally you don't have to re-buy old games to keep playing them, even after major hardware upgrades. Hell I got like a few hundred games on Itch.io years ago for so little money they may as well have been free, and sure they're mostly short "jank" games and art games and stuff, but that's still games and I like them! You can't get that kind of thing (with that kind of "OMG I may never even get through all these..." magnitude, I don't mean jank or art games, both exist on consoles, even if they're not well represented) on a console.

To do anything similar with consoles, you need, like... a dozen consoles, or more, with keeping that number down requiring putting a lot of money and time into careful curation and selection. A single PC does the trick, though.

Another's longevity & archiving (not unrelated to the library thing, but not exactly the same thing). The PC is my platform of last resort for console game archiving. Consoles don't really fill this role at all. Even a "hacked" console (if it's hackable) is on borrowed time. The hardware dies, and eventually the only ones left are in museums or crazy-expensive private collections. Meanwhile I play freeware PC games I downloaded in the 1990s, sometimes, like the exact same binary (to the degree it's "the same", which it isn't, but I just mean I didn't have to go download it again) that's been shuffled from one disk to another ever since. They're not gone. And thanks to PCs, neither are old console games (this is a state of affairs that's on life support, for newer consoles, but not quite dead yet)

Another's the controls. I don't really want a console at my desk (and there's gonna be a PC regardless, so that's nothing extra) because I definitely want one on my TV, and I don't want two of the same console. I don't really want to use a mouse & keyboard on my couch, I've done it, the best solutions I've found take up a bunch of space, look bad, and are still a worse experience than a desk. Some games that I love, I have no interest in playing them if it's not with a mouse and keyboard (and for plenty of others, a controller is better! I like tons of games that are best played with a controller, but for some, it's mouse & keyboard or I'll simply not play them).

Another factor's modding. I've gotten hundreds of extra hours out of games I've bought, thanks to mods. 50+% of my time in the Half Life and Source engines has been in total conversion mods. I'd probably only have put about a quarter as many hours into Morrowind or Skyrim as I have, without mods. I never touched the base game of Rome: Total War again after I discovered the Europa Barbarorum mod, which I sunk probably a hundred or more hours into. All for free, and you don't get that on consoles, the closest you get are things like level designers, sometimes, in LittleBigPlanet or what have you... and those all die when the game servers die.

FWIW I have... a lot of consoles, I don't hate them or anything, and these days most (90%?) of my gaming is on consoles. But they're not a gaming PC.

(Really, if gaming PCs were more-stable, less-janky, and didn't have such a hard time consistently pairing with and juggling multiple BlueTooth controllers [even the SteamDeck fails to live up to "real" consoles, on any of those fronts] I'd probably not bother with consoles at all, but that's such a crippling issue for PC hardware that instead I have a bunch of consoles, and have even re-bought games 3 or 4 times just for the convenience of being able to play them on one of the small set of real consoles currently connected to my TV)