Disclaimer: I’m a rabid PC gamer, and the only console I still own is an Atari 2600. I had a Dreamcast, but loaned it to my brother-in-law two years ago and never bothered to get it back.
If I were to pick a console over a PC, it would be for the following reasons:[ul][li]Stability. Far, far, far fewer worries about crashes, system lockups, hardware incompatibilities, device configurations, memory management, disk space, et cetera.[]Time investment. Almost all of the PC games I play can’t be jumped into and out of quickly. There are some exceptions, of course (just ooooone more round of Civ2) but on the whole, a console game has little startup time, and can be exited quickly and gracefully.[]Cost. Though PC systems are dropping in price, even a bare-bones system will cost more than a typical console, while games are roughly on par, price-wise.Multiplayer. Yes, nearly every PC game these days has multiplayer on it, but I defy you to get four (or more!) people at a party playing the same game simultaneously on a PC without hotseating or setting up multiple computers to play over a LAN.[/ul]Etc, etc, etc. Yet I still don’t own a console and I spent more money than I should getting PC games. I disagree with anyone who says that a console is better than a PC or vice versa – it’s just that they fit different markets, and sometimes those markets overlap.[/li]
YMMV.