[JL2010]

Besides the cost advantage due to the economies of scale, specialized gaming consoles offer something that both developers and gamers want: a consistent experience due to a common hardware platform.

The QA effort that goes into PC games vs a Console games is a considerable difference. The myriad of hardware configurations (amount of RAM, GPU types and its capabilities, processor speed, etc) make for complicated debugging and graphics quality compromises to capture the mean population of computer performance capability. Contrast this to console development, developers can guarantee the performance of their game and optimize accordingly because they only have to account for one hardware and OS configuration (or 2, if they are going for multi-console release). Likewise, gamers can be confident that they won't run into performance or compatibility issues.

Due to the specialization and simplification of these computer systems, gamers also get to enjoy the sheer convenience of gaming consoles. They boot quickly, jump strait into your game and are fairly no-nonsense.

At a low enough price point relative to general purpose PC's or smart phones, they are still the best experience for enthusiast-level gamers.