A decent gui, not fiddling with settings, widespread hardware specs. Games that expect a gamepad and will work with it. Novel input techniques.

I know I came out swinging on consoles, and I absolutely am biased. Instead of trying to one-up you, the best I can do is explain my position.

My biggest gripe on consoles is that it’s a form of vendor lock in. Unless you follow in the footsteps of someone like Gary Bowser (Canada), you aren’t playing newer Mario, Metroid, or Zelda games on a PC. That’s pretty much the same with all exclusives.

Emulation is just now catching up to the PS5, and I suspect that’s part of why they are moving from physical media. Xbox series x has no emulator, likewise Switch 2. This means that one needs to purchase several consoles to play these exclusives. I’m not going to lie, I have probably spent $2000 on mid-grade hardware over the past decade, but I just finished my major upgrades last year-unless I was need RAM.

As far as the GUI goes, I think it’s fit for purpose. My desktop is configured differently because I use it for many things. If I wanted a gaming system that has a UI built for navigating games I could build one, but that is not a skill or expectation I would have for many. Supposedly, SteamOS can handle this, but we are getting pretty deep here. I think this gets deep into fiddling with settings.

So, as far as fiddling with settings goes, that is one of the biggest strengths a console has. If you have no technical skills, and like most can’t navigate from your documents to your program files, I can’t blame you for buying a console. Or, like some technical people I know, they spend all day fucking with settings and don’t want to touch a computer when they get home.

I’m not sure what you mean about widespread hardware specs. The game is optimized for that particular hardware. Assuming the devs did their job right—and that’s not always true—the game should run flawlessly on the console. Same goes for PC though. I bought a beefy video card last year because my 10-year old system was struggling with Clair Obscure. The same week they released a patch that fixed the issue.

Can you explain about games that won’t work with a game pad? Steam I believe allows you to force a gamepad to work, but I’m far as away from my system at the moment.

For novel input techniques, motion controls are just not making it to PC. I played Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom (both of which I purchased and have hardware to pay it on, TYVM) holding my phone under my game pad to add motion controls. It sucked. I have searched for an alternative, I don’t have one.