The State of the Games Industry in Numbers

Gamasutra has up a pair of articles discussing the numbers from this round of the console wars. One focuses on the current frontrunner, Nintendo. Their numerical superiority is highlighted by the number of million selling titles they currently have on tap. Both the DS and Wii are carrying multiple-million sellers, with the current tally for (recently released) Diamond/Pearl sitting at 12,170,000. Meanwhile, in a lengthy article, the site fully explores the impact of console sales in numerous markets and venues, with comparisons between all three consoles (and a focus on Nintendo's sales). "PlayStation 2 titles make up the bulk of software sales in the U.S. and Europe again in 2007, as they have in previous years. The Wii's 2007 numbers equal the GameCube's in 2006, but its software growth isn't yet matching its hardware's. Microsoft's Xbox 360 has benefited largely from the Xbox's demise and the PlayStation 2 sales' slow decline. Even with the PlayStation 3 hardware's current state in Europe, its software sales in Europe are relatively low."

Comments

Release Games worth a damn on the PS3...

[GundamFan]

and I will happily buy them. I know that the games I want to play are coming to the PS3... but a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Re:Release Games worth a damn on the PS3...

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, that is one reason I have not yet purchased a PS3. I have decided not to even bother until Final Fantasy XIII is released.

The Wii isn't in much better shape, though. Despite already having a sizable GameCube collection, I am still purchasing GameCube titles faster than Wii titles. There just aren't that many exciting Wii titles available (though November promises to be an exciting month).

Worse for me, I am usually a late, late adopter. That I own a Wii at all is probably only because I now have a kid of gaming age. The first time I played Half-Life was a couple weeks after The Orange Box was released. So I am not used to paying $50 for a single game. That's made me far, far pickier about the titles I am willing to purchase for the Wii.

Re:Release Games worth a damn on the PS3...

[Stevecrox]

What about motorstorm, Resistance fall of man, Dirt and Oblivion. I'l agree not every PS3 game is a winner (cough Sonic the hedgehog) There is also guitar heroe 3 coming out for the PS3 this month and although I haven't played it I've heard Heavenly Sword is great and apparently the new Tony Hawks will be worth a spin (out this week I believe.)

Personnally I love whats on the PS3 it took me two months to get through Motorstorm and even then I'm still playing online multiplayer with a house mate. I've just started Oblivion and while I have never been a fan of the genre (the whole elder scrolls/final fantasy stuff) I am really enjoying the game. Resistance Fall of Man only took me a week to complete but the multiplayer and copoperative modes are great, its become the game to play when all my friends come around. The only thing we've lacked until are wireless countrollers for guitar heroe, so we've had to keep a PS2 around.

I'm finding myself in the position of being unlikely to have completed the 5 games I own before GTAIV, RockBand and Ratchet and Clank come out.

Re:Release Games worth a damn on the PS3...

[GundamFan]

I guess I'm being a bit harsh... GTA4 and MGS4 are the two big ones I am looking forward to and the continual delays are getting tiresome.

I will admit that Ratchet and Clank looks good... I may pick it up this week or at least grab the demo.

Re:Release Games worth a damn on the PS3...

[Gogo0]

I think the problem is that a lot of people dont consider those games system-sellers.
Im sure i would enjoy playing motorstorm and tony hawk, but i dont really care about them enough to even borrow a friend's ps3, let alone buy one.

Re:Release Games worth a damn on the PS3...

[Ponzicar]

Oblivion is on the computer and 360 as well, so it's also just as good of a reason to buy a 360 or a decent computer. I'm expecting Metal Gear Solid 4 to be the PS3's last chance at success.

Re:Release Games worth a damn on the PS3...

[macshit]

I guess I'm being a bit harsh... GTA4 and MGS4 are the two big ones I am looking forward to and the continual delays are getting tiresome. I saw a promo video (running on a PS3) of MGS4 yesterday. The graphics were very nice (except for facial closeups, which looked pretty bad, like lighting was bleeding through cracks in the models or something), and the video did a good job of making the game look interesting, but the frame-rate was awful ... it was honestly like 10fps, I felt like I was watching a flip-book or something.

You'd think that even if they were having frame-rate problems with the actual game, they'd make a video look at bit smoother! Maybe they run "videos" on the game engine (it seemed to load too fast for that though)?

Anyway, that little niggle did a good job of making an otherwise interesting promo a lot less enticing... but serious frame-rate problems might also explain a delay.

No PC gaming mentioned

[Kohath]

It would be nice to see PC gaming included in these. It seems like PC gaming is mostly MMO-only now, with the focus of every other type of gaming (except flash-based games) moving to consoles. But it would be nice to see numbers to indicate whether this shift is real or just perceived.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[EtoilePB]

The state of PC gaming bugs me, too. The presence on retail shelves is more or less nil, except for a few dozen copies of WoW (and every store, for some reason, has one EverQuest expansion from like six years ago.)

On the other hand, Steam and GameTap keep, well, picking up steam -- and I wonder if those services are even registering. If I play Overlord on my PC through GameTap, I didn't buy it. But it's still making money and I'm still enjoying it. And the charts don't ahve much to say about that. ;)

I wonder if it's also the nature of PC gaming. I have a couple dozen DS games, because they're easy to buy and sell and finish and so on. I move through each with relative quickness and move on to the next. But my PC gaming tends to be open-ended, replayable games (Civ IV, Pirates!, MMORPGs) that I'd buy fewer of anyway.

Anyway, this has all been idle gazing from the "PC Gamer For Life" navel. I would like to know what the actual market is, too, for curiosity's sake if nothing else.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[imasu]

Bought Orange Box yet?

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[webmaster404]

The problem with PC gaming, is that nothing is fully equal. First you've got the base game, that costs you like say $40 and assuming you can run the game fine on wine (that way we don't have to include the price for all the MS stuff) you can run it slowly on your current system (say a 1.8 GHZ processor, 1 GB of RAM and a base NVidia graphics card) but now to upgrade it you can spend $70 for more RAM, and $100 for a better graphics card and your looking at a $210 game and when a Wii costs $250 and games cost $50 and run just the same if you bought a Wii for $300 on eBay or somehow bought a $150 used. And now when you figure in the costs for Windows which is $50 if you get the OEM edition and the price of your computer, you have way over the amount for the Wii and a game. And for all the direct-X-10 games, (until they are all made to work well on XP and Linux) you have Vista to live with and the much much higher system requirements, non-existent drivers, a high price and a new OS to learn. And then 3-4 years later you have to upgrade your system again to play a different game while the Wii will be supported for around 5-6 years. It is that why PC gaming is almost dead, and console games are more popular, they are cheaper in the long run not to mention a lack of big titles and subscription fees for WoW and the lack of Linux/OS-X support is why they are dying.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[solar_blitz]

MMORPGs are becoming the downfall of PC gaming. Originally PC games - even the most expansive and open-ended titles - would last for 100-150 hours worth of gameplay. Afterwards a new game would have to be purchased. MMORPGs can go on indefinitely past 100, 200, 300 hours of gameplay. It could go on until the next big MMORPG emerges. And so many resources are dedicated to MMORPG development that developers barely have the means to make any other game for the PC. But I doubt there's a lot of incentive to develop a PC game to compete with the likes of WOW, so businesses probably skip normal PC games over for MMORPGs.

And Windows Vista might end up killing PC gaming permanently if the numbers are any indication. Direct X 10 is only compatible with Windows Vista, and game developers must choose: the best graphics in a game for an OS barely anyone will be using or continue working with XP? XP is here to stay, and I doubt Vista will become the gamer's OS. But if Microsoft keeps pushing Vista for gaming, gaming for the PC might slowly become undone. Especially since consoles are almost as powerful as PCs are right now. And even the Wii - which is not as powerful as either the XBox360 or PS3 - has enough graphics for lower-end games and the unique controls for intriguing game design. In hindsight, PC gaming doesn't look as good as console gaming right now. Otherwise Bioshock would've been a PC exclusive.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[Kohath]

It's not out for PS3 yet, so no. I have 3 AAA games (R&C, Heavenly Sword, GRAW2) I haven't had time to even try yet. Warhawk still needs me to play it all the time. Plus CoD4 comes out next week. The Orange Box is due for PS3 December 11, so maybe it'll be an xmas vacation game if I decide to play it instead of Uncharted.

I could buy it for PC, but I don't need to play "update my graphics drivers, check compatibility lists on sound card drivers, why did it crash, my HD is full, etc, etc". I like the ability to just start the game and play in HD on a nice big HDTV.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[Shados]

There's also one (probably unpopular) thing to consider... Piracy. on PC, I'd be guessing piracy is relatively extreme, at least for games where the main appeal is NOT online (thus why PC gaming is becoming all MMOs, with a touch of FPSs and RTSs). Single player games seem to be suicide, except for the select few "star" AAA games like Oblivion and such.

If you look at the patterns of the industry, it has a bit of that tendency, even on consoles, unless the console is several times more popular than the alternatives (PS2, Wii)

Its interesting to look at the evolution of PSP and DS gaming for example... PSP had a lot of piracy and DS little, early on. Now the DS probably has even more, so games tend to be slightly more evenly distributed... CEOs of game development companies most definately watch that go. Making games for the PC has to be justified.

Now, again aside a couple of exceptions here and there, non-FPS games that come out on PC only do so because its so easy to dual develop for 360 and PC at the same time...

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah and have a gay shitty fps experience with a douchebag controller. Fuck you consumer whore. Eat shit and die.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[Kohath]

yeah and have a gay shitty fps experience with a douchebag controller. Fuck you consumer whore. Eat shit and die.

Are you a happy person? Does not being a "consumer whore" make you happy? Do any of your attitudes make you happy? Maybe try something more positive. Be in favor of something instead of just against things. Encourage people to do what's right for them instead of hating them for choosing differently than you.

Just a suggestion -- because haters aren't happy.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[LilBlackDemon]

An interesting point, but not only do MMORPGs last forever, but they also take time away from other games. If you only have one or two hours a day to play a game, and you play an MMO, you no longer need to buy other games.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[Chosen Reject]

to upgrade it you can spend $70 for more RAM, and $100 for a better graphics card and your looking at a $210 game and when a Wii costs $250 and games cost $50

And then 3-4 years later you have to upgrade your system again to play a different game while the Wii will be supported for around 5-6 years.

This is actually one are where PC games can shine, though. First off, if all you are doing is upgrading your RAM or GPU then you have 100% backwards compatibility. But in 5-6 years a new game for a console will look 5-6 years old(1), whereas a new game for a PC will look new. Also, you talked about one game ending up costing $210 due to upgrades, but those upgrades work for all your other games. I don't have to make an upgrade for the Orange Box, and then Quake Wars, and then Crysis, and then UT3(2). I upgrade for one and I'm good to go. So the extra $170 (I'll use your numbers for simplicity) is now spread out over the number of games you buy, which admittedly is the same for a console. If you only buy a 360 and Halo 3, then that cost you a lot.

So you have to spread out the cost to the usefulness of the system as a whole. Most people still buy a computer in addition to their console because they need it for things which a console does not do. Assuming they buy a cheap Dell (I think ~$400 right now) and a cheap console (either PS2 or Wii) you are already looking at costs that are more than what I spent a year ago ($550) on a computer that plays the Orange Box and Quake Wars just fine (I have not yet tried the Crysis and UT3 demos) at a resolution of 1280x1024 (which is higher than the PS2 and Wii can achieve. If you look at consoles capable of HD then the price becomes even bigger. But I just have to upgrade to a new GPU (maybe $150) and/or a new CPU (maybe $100) and I'm back up to near top of the line. So for less than the cost of a new console I get 100% backwards compatibility and all my old games can look newer than they did before the upgrade. If you buy an 360 or PS3 to play your Xbox or PS2 games (if they work) you don't get updated graphics, only better fps.

Seriously, the big difference between consoles and PCs is the number of people who can play on a given system, the ease of setup, and the types of games. How you play the games (keyboard and mouse or sitting on the couch) is a moot point as you can hook up keyboards and mice to the new consoles (at least the PS3, I'm not sure about the others or even how well it is supported) and you can always play a PC game on the couch with either a wireless keyboard/mouse combo or by plugging in a controller. So if you want to know which to buy, you just determine which type of games you like(RTS or fighting game), how you like to play (buddy sharing screen space or not), etc. But cost has nothing to do with it.

1) I realize that developers do learn the platforms as time goes by. However, tweaks to make something run faster is not the same as much faster GPU, especially when the time frame is 5-6 years.
2) I mention these games mostly because they are currently the most hardware taxing games, even if two of them are only demos right now.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[Targon]

People seem to miss a very basic concept behind gaming on the PC and the costs involved. When it comes down to it, you have your base computer(the non-gamer portion of the price) that gets used for things other than playing games. Then you have the extra cost to make it into a gaming computer, which is what SHOULD be compared to the price of consoles.

So, let's take a look at the prices out there...

$550-$600 for the base computer, the hard drive(non-RAID setup), integrated video, 2 gigs of memory.

To turn that machine into a game machine, you are looking at paying $400 or so for the video card. That's it, you already had a machine that was ready to play games except the video card. You can toss an additional gig of memory at it for under $100 if you feel it is needed.

All of those prices included the price of the pre-installed Windows Vista Home Premium that comes on many systems these days. No need for Linux and the issues that come with trying to get Wine installed on it, or other configuration headaches.

As for why people think that PC gaming is almost dead, it is because the only games many people look at are the action game market, which includes first person shooters. Companies like EA are afraid to try anything new, so innovative titles have been growing harder and harder to find. If you look at the console market, you see that "more of the same" did NOT work well for the PS3, and it isn't doing well for the PC or Xbox 360 either. Games that have a good storyline and dialog make a game stick with you for a lot longer than games that only add extra special effects.

You should note that the PC market lost a LOT when Interplay died(due to the stupid Frenchie that bought the company and then ran it into the ground). Interplay was the last big publisher that focused on the RPG genre in the way that Sierra was the last big developer of adventure games before Vivendi killed them.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[Sigma 7]

MMORPGs are becoming the downfall of PC gaming. Originally PC games - even the most expansive and open-ended titles - would last for 100-150 hours worth of gameplay. Citation? (Not that I don't believe you, but some of those expansive titles may last 100 hours for the wrong reason. Telengard, for example, had extra-long transition time between movements as it rendered the dungeon - and you couldn't short-circuit it properly with an emulator since it has a "auto-pass" timer. )

While I do feel that the older games may have that amount of playability, it can be distored by nostalgia - back then, you spent more time on a specific game since it was unlikely you had a large collection (unless you pirated), and you probably focused on a few specific ones. Now, you have a wider selection and could rapidly jump from one game to another, especially if it's a flash game.

Even so, there will always be PC games - it's a highly available platform for independant developers.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, if all you are doing is upgrading your RAM or GPU then you have 100% backwards compatibility. But in 5-6 years a new game for a console will look 5-6 years old(1), whereas a new game for a PC will look new.
I was not under the impression that an '02-'03 motherboard would support LGA 775, or AM2 for that matter.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[edwdig]

Seriously, the big difference between consoles and PCs is the number of people who can play on a given system, the ease of setup, and the types of games.

The big difference is console hardware is a fixed platform with VERY strict quality control on the software, whereas the PC is a complete free for all. On a console, you don't have to worry if the game will work or not. On a PC, you're almost guaranteed to have driver issues or some other incompatibility at some point.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[grumbel]

### But cost has nothing to do with it.

In the past it was normal to upgrade a PC every few years, since office, internet and stuff required a new computer every now an then. The thing is, this has changed quite a few years ago. PCs today are fast enough for basically all normal uses, there no longer is any need or benefit from upgrading except when the hardware itself breaks down. Which is the reason why my current PC is 5+ years old and I have another one which now is a good 7 years old which I still use on a regular base. There simply is no need for upgrade, that thing is still good enough for almost everything, and that includes a whole lot of compiling, 3D modeling and other stuff.

So this whole "but PC can be used for other stuff beside games" argument just falls apart today. If you buy a PC for gaming, you buy it for the games, not for anything else and a normal $550 Office PC won't give you much gaming fun for long, since soon the framerates will crumble and new investments will be needed. How is that not much more expensive then a $300 XBox360, which will last for five years or more and require no upgrades at all, ever?

That said, cost is not the only issue, the other big issue is ease of use. Which starts with nasty things like constant driver updates and such, but goes on to a whole bunch of simply unsolvable issues. Sure, in theory I can attach a PC to a TV and play with a gamepad, but did you ever try that in practice? My gamepad can't navigate Windows, I can't make my PC boot as fast as a XBox and most games simply are not build to be played from a couch, i.e. they offer no in-game way to configure a gamepad and tweaking something in joy2key or other apps together can take hours and will still not give anything half as smooth as a console. The whole overall gaming experince quite frankly sucks on a PC. And since more and more once PC exclusive titles are now ported to consoles or even developed for them in the first place there simply isn't enough reason to buy a gaming PC, especially when I can buy *all* of the next-gen consoles for the price of a single $1000 gaming PC.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[grumbel]

### Then you have the extra cost to make it into a gaming computer

Which in a lot of cases means throwing the old computer away and buying a new one from scratch. You can't upgrade a PC ad infinitum, since your power supply will ran out of power, your mainboard won't handle the CPU, your new mainboard won't like the old RAM and all that stuff.

### As for why people think that PC gaming is almost dead, it is because the only games many people look at are the action game market,

What other market should they look at? Flightsims are mostly dead, adventures are mostly dead, western RPGs are either dead or now console centric. All of what once was PC exclusive is now either on consoles or just disappeared completly. The only thing that is still going strong are he MMORPGs, but considering how much time they require to play, that might not be exactly a good thing for the PC market, since people end up lacking the time for the other genres.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[grumbel]

I think you missed his point. He is not saying that old games lasted 150h, but that even the *longest* of the old games had eventuell an end around the 150h mark. MMORPGs on the other side don't have an end ever and thus the user no need to buy a new game.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[PingSpike]

There's always OpenGL, that works on windows XP and Vista...among other things. Of course, a lot of developers have put all of their eggs in the direct3D basket and now they're crying foul that microsoft broke the unwritten rule that all new versions would work at least on the last MS OS or two.

Time will tell if the disgruntled development houses will grin and bear it, eat the cost of developing for directx9 and directx10 or if they'll take a second look at OpenGL for a one stop source. In the past direct3d fit that purpose well enough, most of the PC gaming ran windows and windows always had direct3d.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[Creepy]

DX10 compatibility is only officially Vista only - the Alky project is working on XP compatibility.

So far, DX10 has been less than satisfying for me, however - it doesn't look that much better than DX9, tends to be crash prone (I crash about every 20 minutes in The Witcher and about 30 minutes in Hellgate even with the MS hotfix and latest drivers, but that's better than every 2 minutes without the hotfix). The Crysis demo has not crashed on me in DX10 after the hotfix, however, and gets good performance on higher settings than either Hellgate or The Witcher, so I think it does a better job of resource management. Note that I didn't have much of a chance to play Hellgate over the weekend and the latest patch lists some memory management issues being resolved, which I hope that translates to "less crash happy."

The reason the PC market is heavily into MMORPGs is because of several factors - a) it's almost impossible to pirate, b) successful games are lucrative cash-cows, and c) it's easy to convince a corporate entity to invest in them because of a and b. The PC is also still a premiere platform for shooters, as can be seen with the recent and upcoming Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3, Call of Duty 4, The Orange Box, etc (many are PC first or simultaneous releases). "Exclusive" games are a bit of a joke - if MS wants a (non-owned) studio to make a game exclusively for, say, XBox 360, they will pay a fee to the developing studio to make up for income they would lose by not releasing on the competing platform. Also, it is very easy to port between PC and XBox due to them both having the DirectX API, so it's a bit of a no-brainer. The PC, Mac and PS3 using the OpenGL API is generally a fairly easy port, as well, though there are some minor issues such as endian-ness.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[Targon]

You seem to have missed my point. If you take a new computer(dual core processor, 2 gigs of system memory), and the rest of the components in your average $600 PC, you can consider that the non-gamer components of a computer. This means that the only parts that should be considered the "gamer components" will be the video card, perhaps one or two gigs of additional memory, and possibly a video card.

Now, until game consoles come with dual GPU video, if you want to compare costs between a PC with a gamer in mind, you can take the video power of a Xbox 360 or PS3 as the power of video for your gamer PC. In many situations, no additional power supply would be needed since you do NOT need a Geforce 8800 or Radeon HD X2900, so the normal power supply may be enough.

So, what is the cost of the video card then? Call it $300 or perhaps $350 to put it on par with a PS3? Then you can toss in an extra gig of system memory. You don't NEED to buy the top of the line video setup to meet the power of these consoles, so trying to compare the top of the line PC to a top of the line console isn't fair since a top of the line console could NOT compare.

As far as the lack of non-action games, that is the fault of the game publishers not understanding that there is a big market for other types of games, but if you try to compare the garbage of the other genres to the top of the action titles doesn't make sense when trying to compare demand. You can't say that just because porn is the most popular content on the Internet means that all other content isn't worth producing, but that is how the game industry seems to be looking at things.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[grumbel]

### If you take a new computer(dual core processor, 2 gigs of system memory), and the rest of the components in your average $600 PC

My point is that I don't need a new computer. A five year old one will work fine today and be good enough for non-gaming uses. But you can't just install a new graphics card in that one or a new CPU, since mainboard and powersupply just won't handle it. So if I want gaming I have to buy a completly new computer, there is no 'non-gaming use', since that is already covered by the old one.

The problem these days is simply that there is no longer a need to upgrade your office computer and when you upgrade it only every 5 or 10 years, gaming becomes a problem, since no low-cost upgrade can make that machine game ready, it requires a new PC. Also the PC market is pretty much saturated.

Re:No PC gaming mentioned

[Targon]

People talk about the difference between a normal PC and a gaming computer. That being the case, while you CAN upgrade an older 5-year-old computer, I go from a fairly modern computer(1-2 years old, not 5). There is also a big difference between the people who buy a clearance special(the $350-$400 range) and those who buy a new computer in the $550-$600.

It is expected that if you buy a computer that starts off as a cheap piece of garbage that it will cost more just to bring it up to the standards of the day, let alone turning it into a decent gaming machine. If games are even a possible use of a computer, you do NOT aim to start at the bottom of the barrel before you plan to upgrade it.

So, if you plan to go from a mainstream computer to a gaming machine, you look at the price difference between an AVERAGE computer and the gaming machine. Average these days includes a dual-core processor and at least 1 gig of system memory.

Today, I ordered an Xbox 360

[LKM]

What about motorstorm, Resistance fall of man, Dirt and Oblivion.

So you have two launch titles and two multiplatform games, one of which really should be played on a PC. You also mention Heavenly Sword, which was supposed to be the game to finally make the PS3 worth it, but at 6 hours of playtime, I just don't see it. GTA IV is probably better on the 360, and R&C looks gorgeous, but it's essentially the same damn game I've already played on the PS2.

I've bought a PS3 on launch, but I've ordered an Xbox 360 today* as my second console next to the Wii. The PS3 games just aren't coming. Maybe I can use the thing as a Bluray player and for the occasional game of Little Big Planet (if we ever see that) or something.

* I ordered a 360 despite the fact that I:

1. Immensely dislike Microsoft
2. Don't want to pay for online gaming
3. Fully expect the thing to explode within a week

It just can't be helped: If you want to play some of the games that don't make it to the Wii, the 360 is unfortunately the better choice than the PS3. Actually, I'd even say that the PS3 isn't really a viable option at all, at this time. Oh, and Sony, what's up with the PS3 controller? Do you really think you got that right on the first try? A decade without changes? I'm not 6 years old anymore, you know! How about a controller that isn't so small that I have to hold the thing with two fingers so I get hand cramps within half an hour of Warhawk and have to use the crappy Logitech chill stream instead, which has totally broken analog sticks and no "home" button?

From Zero to Playtime in a few Seconds

[LKM]

I don't think cost and performance are what differentiates PC and console gaming. For me, I hardly ever play PC games if I can avoid it. The reason? After a long day of staring at the screen, I just want to go home, plunk down in my sofa, push the button on the remote, take the gamepad, and start playing. I don't want to install stuff. I don't want to worry about drivers. I don't want to check system requirements. I don't want to quit my mail application to free up RAM. I don't want to worry about incompatible copy protection fucking up my installation. I just want to turn the damn thing on and start playing.

If I play with friends, I just want to grab three more controllers and play the game split-screen. No worries about networking, about them bringing their own laptops, about any of that stuff.

Of course, some genres are more widely available on consoles, and some are more widely available on PCs, so the types of games you want to play influence your hardware choices. Still, I think the main difference is that console games are supposed to just work, and go from 0 to playtime in a few seconds.