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Twenty plus years ago the gaming world was significantly different than it is today.
You had computer gaming on the one hand, which started with platforms like the Commodore 64, Apple II and Atari 800, then moved on to the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and the IBM PC, although in the end the PC outlived them all. There were of course many other computing platforms over the years but these were some of the biggest in the USA.
The experiences on computers centered on using a mouse and keyboard with complex interactions and deep experiences. These were games with big manuals, large learning curves, and a real commitment by gamers. The games were often satisfying although during the glory days of 3.5" floppy drives and MS-DOS it was often extremely difficult to get a game running at all.
Console gamers on the other hand have Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Sony and of course many others to thank. Games on these platforms were usually far simpler since consoles had even less memory, slower CPUs, and far more restrictive storage capacities, not to mention simplified input methods.
Consoles turned on quickly, provided games with sufficient depth and didn't require editing an autoexec.bat or config.sys file to get them running. And although computers sometimes got console ports and consoles sometimes got computer ports, the best games on either platform were usually native to that platform.
Fast forward to today and you have a world where blockbuster titles on PCs are often simplified ports from the console world and consoles have sufficient power to run games that would have taxed the best PC from the mid-1990s. It's all gone haywire and we often ask ourselves if it's for the better or the worse.
My perspective is that I couldn't afford the pace of PC gaming, and that PC gaming wasn't going the direction I wanted it to. Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s RPGs were dying out, PCs required more memory, faster, better graphics cards and oodles of money in order to keep up with the absurd level of realism developers were aiming for.
That has of course now changed, although you still have the occasional Crysis or other PC game that depends the best and most powerful PC the world has to offer. But today you can play most modern PC games on systems costing far less than $1000 and there are actually quite a few great RPGs.
When I bought the original Xbox a month or two after its release I didn't know that PC gaming would slow its pace and that PC developers would move onto consoles. I just knew that PCs were changing in ways I wasn't happy with and that I wasn't about to start playing action or massively multiplayer RPGs or real-time strategy games. Those weren't the experiences I was looking for.
And what I found were games I enjoyed, things like Halo and Project Gotham Racing and Knights of the Old Republic. And I didn't need to buy a new graphics card, expand my memory, or re-install Windows every six months. I could just stick the disc in the drive, power up the Xbox, and play.
Today of course the parity between PC gaming and console gaming is even closer than it was when the Xbox premiered. Consoles are often the preferential platform since they have built-in DRM that no one even thinks to complain about and gamers are happy to buy DLC and sequels. So while PC gaming still thrives, niche developers like Valve and Blizzard own the hearts and minds of PC gamers while other developers focus their resources on the console market.
In my opinion the take away from this is that while you could ignore console gaming twenty years ago, and believe me, I did, you can't really do that today. While many still put far more hours into gaming on PCs then consoles, most hardcore gamers own some sort of console device even if it's just a Wii, DS, or iPhone.
The gaming world has changed, and in my mind it's for the better. But even if I log 99% of my gaming time on the Xbox 360, my personal console of choice, I still fondly remember gaming on the C-64, Amiga, and PC. Those days are special and I will always look upon them with reverence and respect. And so the PC may not be dead but it really does seem to have been replaced in most gamer's minds by the almighty console.