Since my previous post didn't make it though and me having to type it again, I'm just going to make it short:

They are using games that aren't sold on PC like RDR2, websites like youtube for popularity talk, not sales talk (I mean, while we're at it why not talk about facebook posts since we're using video view popularity as a sales selling point?). 

Going by PC digital revenue, it's 28b, while console digital revenue is: 23b, even then the growth for the previous year has risen, but that doesn't indicate then consoles are now suddenly going to take back everything and locked it away with the key forever. Then of course we have the mobile sales and userbase and revenue, which far surpasses both, so while we're on the "consoles make more than PC" argument, we may as well go "mobile makes more than the other two combined" and then knock over the rest of the dominoes. 

they are also using games that aren't sold on consoles like Warhammer, WoW, League of Legends, etc. I was never arguing that consoles were going to take back everything and lock it away forever. I simply stated a fact. Console revenue was more than PC revenue in 2018. Simple as that. 

The problem with the "dominoes" argument is that it assumes two things. It assumes that ad revenue from F2P games are the same as sales revenue. It assumes that mobile games, and AAA games are fighting for the same market. 

I say advertisement and marketing! Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo spending millions in that departments. The general consumer see those advertisements on TV, internet, subscription E-mails, Console News Channel, on good old advertisement posters, at retailers/retailers brochures, at gaming events/exhibitions, etc. That's also a big reason why the general consumer buys them, why he buys any kind of (unnecessary) product! From a strictly neutral point of view, the general consumer wouldn't need to have a console but the advertisements together with friends/colleagues making them to want one ultimately making them to buy one (if we leave out all the other reason already mentioned before from others).

Only spent like $1,500 AUD for the entire rig. (Monitor included.)
For comparison sake... The Xbox 360 and Xbox One X launched at $650 AUD each here.

So whilst I could have probably built the rig for $1,000 or less by sacrificing PSU quality/Ram Amount/GPU, it wouldn't have lasted the test of time and would have required more expenditure later.

And yes, there are games where I am severely CPU limited, but none of which I haven't been able to get a minimum of 30fps... Playing a game like Civilization is a test of patience, I generally gravitate towards one of my more powerful workstations for that though. But for testing/tweaking, it's always interesting to see how far and hard I can push it.

It still out-benches my Ryzen 2700u notebook.

I don't exclusively game on it. I have multiple desktops in my home, generally my main system is rather potent.
Every-time I build a new rig or upgrade a part, the old rig/part gets filtered down to an older rig.

Price of DRAM and GPU's are tumbling down, so it is starting to feel like Christmas again... Just want Intel to update it's LGA2066 platform.

Have we come to a point where we are able to reliably track PC digital sales and thus make direct, reliable comparisons to consoles?

In saying that, the PC market is certainly larger than console, but it's also far more fragmented and competitive... Which has it's Pro's and Con's.

What are we arguing sales numbers for? The PS2's 120+ million console sales didn't help the PS3 any. I'd argue the PS2's numbers actually helped the 360. What I'm asking is what is the point of next gen consoles?

But you know what I've noticed? The consoles don't have any reason outside of exclusives, so when a console loses exclusives, the fans get mad. More people with the opportunity to play a game, and it's a problem. Look at all the people mad about xbox exclusives going to PC, and PS users saying PS exclusives will never do the same. More people able to access the game without owning the box, and people are so upset. Why?

I'm beginning to see that is the outlining issue with a console. People can't just think to themselves, "it's great that PC people get to play God of War." Just, "my exclusives will never come to PC, xbox or nintendo!" You know.. despite more software sales fueling the life the series and helping to ensure we see proper sequels. Maybe if those boxes were actually worth owning outside of the games locked to it, people wouldn't feel the need to be like that. More people playing what they want regardless of what console they own is a good thing.

It starts with fornite, i guess, allowing PS4 and Xbox one users to play together. Don't think exclusives will be a thing of the past in due time.

Look at sega. The games they made, wasn't limited to the 10 million dreamcast units, but xbox, gamecube and ps2's total sales. Eventually sony will figure it out, like microsoft already has, and exclusives wont exist. They will come to everything.

Its seems that you are the one that dosent really get it.

Yes, i think its silly to deny that we all dont have a bit of a emotional investment in our consoles of choice.Much like football, we like to see our favorite developer and hardware manufacture of choice doing well.But there is a reason that games are made available exclusively to it.And the reason is quite simple: the hardware manufacturer wants to not only sell the games, but also the consoles, so that he earns more money and have "power" over the industry, since he is a leader.And with power, he makes even more money, and so it goes on and on.

The "Hardware manufacturer, or the Big Three, should go third party!" discussion is almost as old as the industry itself.And honestly, If it were to happen, it would suck, because innovation in hardware for gaming happens mostly because of the Big Three and because of their interests in having a ecosystem of their own.But thats neither here or there, because if I were to discuss with you the benefits and disavantages of going third party, we would be here until tomorrow.And lets face it, Sony and Nintendo are not going anywhere anytime soon.MS is another story, but also a story for another time.

I think that, at the end, the most compelling argument for there to be different ecosystems, and thus exclusives to one console or another, is quality.Look at Sega.The quality of its games plummeted after it became a third party developer.If it were to happen to the other developers, they would lose their biggest motivation to make excellent games:To sell a console.And while I am not saying thats what would happen for sure, you dont have to look much further than Sega or Valve to see its effects:How many years has it been since Valve made a decent game?Or made an actual improvement in their storefront?How many years has it been since a Sonic game has been deemed as excellent, outside of Sonic Mania?Or any Sega property, outside of Atlus(thats wasnt part of Sega to begin with) and a few odd titles?

Competition is essential, and a rival always needs to exist.

What if I told you, making exclusives so you can sell consoles, and then profiting off all publishing fees, you charge to 3rd parties, fuels the exclusive series even more than being 3rd party?

What this guy said.

Absolutely agree with everything, especially the bolded.

The reason Nintendo and Sony put so much effort into trying to make stellar games (like GOW or BOW) is because they need to make games that are SOOOO GOOD that people will pay for a console just to play them.

Edit: i also wanna add that in my case i actually like playing on console more, i just like the ease of use a lot.

And where are the really old games not being sold on PC that are being sold on current gen that make the money that LoL does to this day?. The list they have for games not sold are current gen based, not last gen based because last gen isn't being counted in for profits and revenue, that's the big difference here. 

You stated a fact, but that doesn't mean to say that this year or next, the opposite will occur. It's why I'll never bother to assume "it's here and now", because here and now isn't going to matter in the next 2-50 years. Simple as that for 2018 yes, without a doubt, does it matter in the long-run, with how we're moving towards all digital and streaming?, no, not really.

AAA and mobile aren't the same, but you're also assuming AAA>anything else, but you'll also assume mobile>everything else, the latter actually makes a factual correction over the former, because it simply has the most users and makes the most money. Have you seen Candy crush and other games out there that take far less effort to craft and make far more money and have far more users than what it takes to craft one exclusive for one plastic box?. I wouldn't assume more effort/more time put into something>something that took less effort and time, as if it makes less money than the former, while the former does make far less money than the latter. Just take a gander at SP games, yeah, they sell well, but online based games are making more per user dumping into those systems on a daily basis.

Besides what everyone else in here has just said another reason to own consoles in the future is going to be backwards compatibility and remote play functionality of which Switch's successor likely won't feature and that'll really get game developers to rethink about investing resources into developing portable games ...

Just because PS Now exists and is becoming more attractive does not mean that owning hardware is still not attractive or that it is any less attractive in general to invest in their ecosystem. For the most part, Sony is not going to open up any of their key exclusive content running natively on other platforms aside from their own anytime soon ...

OPs dream of Sony somehow becoming more open like Microsoft is a very distant future since they manage to create more AAA IPs than even Nintendo does either!