Sure, if you ONLY like the games Nintendo is offering, you don't have to waste any thoughts about which is the best platform for you to play the many many many good 3rd-party-games on.

But most people have a bit wider range of game interests and want to play some other popular and/or good games like Grand Theft Auto, The Witcher, Metal Gear Solid, Batman: Arkham Knight Star Wars Battlefront, FIFA, Madden, NBA, The Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Fallout, Wasteland Tomb Raider, Just Cause, Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Metro, The Division, Rainbow Siege, DOOM, BioShock, Borderlands, Saint's Row, Dark Souls, Diablo, Dishonored, Hitman, Alien: Isolation, Ori, Rocket League, Half-Life, Portal, The Talos Principle, Minecraft, Life is Strange, the Telltale games... and these people have 3 choices to play most of these games: PC, PlayStation or Xbox.

Also forgot to add in a little backstory for my prior knowledge to jumping into PC gaming, the last PC I had was efftively a prebuilt I'd bought from a guy I knew who ran a gaming net cafe that he closed in the end, it could manage just old games and WoW, barely even Minecraft and this was at the time  between 1024x728 and then 1366x768.

When I finally decided to make the jump I consulted a friend and PC parts picker but even back then I knew it wasn't goign to be cheap but still jumped for it anyway and for the life of me I did not want to go super cheap on the build either since I knew that would actually hinder my overall build in the longrun, that's the one thing most new folk forget when making the jump, don't go super cheap and then mix in expensive stuff, it will only hurt you down the line.

I do have the odd one or two friends that haven't exactly made the jump yet which is due to the prices of some parts but I am educating them over time to simply wait and compile a build via sites like PCPP in order to tally up what they will allow their wallet to go for but again I advise them on not forcefully skimping on important parts.

Building a on par console pc doesn't work, PC does not have optimisation longevity. AMD/Nvidia would not make money otherwise.

PC vs Console argument is pointless, waste of time.

Add to that the significant overhead a large, bloated, all-purpose OS adds, making a PC matching a console's specs a lot slower than the console. For example, the same hardware that's able to decently power a Chromebook chokes on anything but 'one task' when the OS is replaced with Windows 10.

And, of course, consoles being one, well spec'ed, generally 'frozen' configuration for the life of the console allows developers to optimize their releases to those exact console specs. It's impossible to do that for PCs and therefore the various graphics 'settings'. One example, I got one of my kids an ASUS i5, 8GB RAM, integrated Intel graphics PC. It's not a 'gaming' rig and we didn't expect it to perform well but... 12 fps running X-COM at the lowest settings? That was a surprise.

And, finally, the constant urge to 'keep up'. Soon after you spend a few hundred $$ or the console-killing box, you may end up buying yourself memory upgrades, expesive graphics cards... who knows how many major upgrades cycles you are likely to perfprm over a console's 6-7 years lifecycle. Two? Three?

Oh and... exclusives. I love Bloodborne. There's nothing like it for PCs.

We just covered that in numerous replies above though, what you said is basically going against what was already discussed.

What you said makes PC gaming sound as pointless as ever and completely weak vs consoles and yet that's very far from the truth.

PC also happens to have plenty of exclusives that consoles simply don't have...

How often do you need to replace a NAS hdd? Data centers clain the mean time for replacement is 6 years, they make far more use of them of course. I have 2 external backup drives to backup important data to just in case. Easy to buy a new one every 5 years and copy the whole lot over.

I had those 3D shutter glasses in the late 90's. I used them with a CRT projector, wall filling image, played Descent 2 with it which was pretty awesome. Yet stereoscopic 3D is still far removed from actual VR and although a lot of PC games were compatible with stereoscopic 3D they weren't build for it. For example the Hud of Descent 2 appeared to be sticking through the wall if you got too close.
After a month or so the novelty had worn off and sitting on the couch, keyboard and mouse in hand with flickering glasses on top of my own glasses wasn't comfotable for long periods of time. Plus I was more into rts back then, pointless in 3D, resolution meant everything for those games.
I never jumped on the recent 3D craze as nowadays you need to buy a whole new projector for it to work. I rather wait with upgrading the projector until 4K becomes affordable. Plus games stlll aren't made for 3D (apart from some 3DS games maybe)

So with VR I hope games will actually be made for VR, not just VR compatible. Anyway I agree, building a 800-1000 dollar PC, plus 350 or more for the headset, and more for a compatible motion controller is too much. However since I already have all the bits and pieces for ps4, that will be a much better place to try it out.

I am not saying the PC gaming is pointless. It's clearly possible to build a superior PC gaming platform. At a cost.

Yes, PCs are upgradeable. At a cost.

And, yes, 'the Internet' is free for PCs while the top 2 consoles charge for the privilege so that's a PC advantage.

Speaking for myself, I like to separate the PC/laptop which is where I do my 'work' from the living room entertainment center where I relax. Not to mention that there are 3-4 gamers in our house. The console is shared but I'm not willing to share my PC and neither do my kids want to share theirs. One of my kids does have a gamer rig, by the way. I built it for him 2-3 years ago  and it wasn't cheap. Now he's at the point where he's begging me for either a brand-new PC or some major upgrade that would probably cost more than what we spent initially. Maybe I'll get him a Steam machine, I don't know. Those are going to need constant upgrading or they become obsolete in a few years too.

I've many times took 7 years to change out something from an inital PC build. Mainly when it failed. Since you can adjust your settings, in games. It makes the power problem not an issue. And since consoles have weaker power. A lot of ports don't tax your system, in the first place. GTA is a perfect example. It was optimized so well. You can run it on shit, at medium settings, fine.

A friend of mine did that, with a old laptop. That's the part were people save. It be like buying the PS4 copy of GTA V. And running it on PS3 hardware. You have the best version. But can still use it on old stuff. Then in the future, saved money by just popping that in on a better system, later. I don't get why people always complain about PC and consoles. What the OP talked about is what it has always been about. It's still dumb the elite nonsense happens in the first place. Because theres no rule in having to run a game at MAX, every single time. Why is slightly lower wrong? That's the leyway and perk of a PC. The whole reason consoles exist is because of not wanting to do your own work and maintanace to play games.

There's nothing wrong in that. That's thats sides perk. But PC people are right too. You can save money, as you go along in the years on PC. I can still play every PC game I own, with VMware, DOS box etc. to this point. On a console. Most of the time you have to keep all the hardware or rebuy games and wait. In 17 years of me having PC's. I've only bought/built a total of 4. VS 20 consoles and handhelds.

My PC prices were around $700, 900, 1000, 900 (parts moved over from the $1000 build).  A total around $3000, give or take taxes. My Consoles, accesories & handhelds together exceed that.

It's not simple to compare PC and consoles, but I can say 'hidden fees' aren't a thing with PC. If you don't have any idea about what you're doing, you'll probably never think of some things you should be thinking of, but that's not 'hidden fees'. Obviously you need a keyboard and a mouse, they're not a hidden fee. And obviously you need some hardware to enable you to use WiFi, it doesn't just work without any equipment. It's not a hidden fee.

The way I see it, PCs cost a lot more initially, but games cost less and online is free. You can get better graphics but it's likely that you'll have to upgrade at some point. Console are relatively cheap initially, but games cost more and you have to pay for online (on most consoles). Consoles are a lot simpler but they're also a lot less flexible compared to PCs.