that wont be the case though. nextgen consoles will make the pc really shine, the pc is not being used anywhere near its potentail cause of ancient consoles, once new consoles come out the pc will really seperate itself from current gen hardware.

What is " typical PC settings" supposed to mean ? Typical build ? I don't think a typical build PC can play stuff at ultra settings. 

An i5-2500K OC'ed, 8GB of RAM and anything higher than an AMD HD7870 can play Battlefield 3 at 1080p with a min. rate of 30fps, and averaging almost 50fps with all set to max (source). Even with only 4GB of RAM it still should be able to do it.

That's a 2 years (and 2 gens) old Intel CPU and a 1 year old mid class GPU from AMD that soon will be replaced aswell. That's what a typical gamimg PC would be to me, and plays almost everything on max at 1080p.

By typical build I don't mean up-to-date or fairly up-to-date hardware, I mean the average rig that a gamer might have.

Your suggestions are not what I would call widely adopted. The K version of 2500 retailed for 210$, a 7870 will set you back at least 200$ and 8 gb of ram will be 60$.

Steam statistics are a good indication http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

I have my doubts about the "PC has better graphics" argument. You can't compare a constant -the console- (set price and realese date) VS a variable -the PC- (hardware date, price and adoption may vary).

That's the key part.

A gamer will build/buy a PC to play. He/she will go for the max performance possible given their budget, and given that we are talking about gamers, their budget will be a bit higher than the budget of a normal person, so a 200 $/€ CPU and a 200 $/€ GPU are very likely to be used.

Also, the Steam stadistics are fine for some things dut very useless for others because they include every PC where Steam is installed and that takes part on the survey, even the PCs that aren't build for gaming. Just look at it, do you really think a gamer would get a PC with a dual core and play using intel's GPU?

 What good is Steam for stuff other than gaming ?

True, but there is a difference between a gaming PC and a PC that is also used to play games.

Of that survey, not all those PCs have Steam to play games like Crysis 3, Skyrim, Assassins Creed, etc. Many of those PCs are "office like" PCs that are just enough to play World of Goo, many of the MMOs or The Sims for example.

Just like many bought a PS2 to use it as a DVD player, got a PS3 for its BluRay, a Wii just for WiiSports or got a Xbox360 for Kinect, there are many that have Steam on its PCs because that store game they bought years ago (like Half Life 2) demanded it to be installed or for one of those indie game that peopl around them talk about.

They aren't really the kind of people that will get a gaming PC or that will buy a console at launch, don't you think?

You are over-simplyfing stuff.  You go from the least demanding gamers ( LOL) --> to more demanding ones (Skyrim) --> to really demanding ones (Crysis 3)

Nothing changes the fact that the people who have the 2500k pc are barely half and not the majority and the people who have pc that runs Crysis 3 are even less.

There is no point in defining the "average" build if your definition of gamer is extremely limited.

My definition of a PC gamer in this discussion is the gamer that will care about the same games than a console gamer do and wants to play them as smooth and with as much eye candy as possible.

That's why I told you before that it's not the same a "gaming PC" than a "PC than can also play games".

The PC gamer that wants to play the games as smooth as possible is not the same as the average gamer then because the average gamer will not spend 200+$ every 18 months on a new GPU or CPU or Ram.

And if there is no correlation between the console budget and the PC badget, how on earth are we comparing these two ?