I like to sit on the couch and I want my gaming device to be a black box that does its job and is dedicated to couch based entertainment (I use it for TV too).

PC gaming requires a...... PC... usually sitting at a desk, much more powerful than I need, lots of configuration etc etc to hard.... I'm a couch gamer in the evening after the programming is done.

I don't care much about the PlayStation download thing. I generally prefer to buy my games on DVD anyway.

Sony should care however.... despite not wanting to spend money on digital downloads I find I spend ever more with Apple App Store because despite my hesitations they make it easy and it works, whereas I don't want to buy digital with Sony and they make it easy not to do that.

>>>PC means freedom, or not being at the mercy of a single uncaring corporate entity

I just don't care about that stuff any more.. life's too short to worry about who our corporate overlords are.

Yeah, wait until you will have 30GB update for a game to download.

Put in game, 20GB update. Cool, guess I'm not playing that today then.

Sold that thing a couple of months later, what a waste of money the whole rigmarole was. Bloodborne wasn't even that good imo either.

Oh, you mean the 15 mins swap of a graphics card every 3 years?

It's not as bad as it used to be… but it's still not like an appliance.

"Maintaining" a PC is super easy...

But consoles drop frames as well, people just don't care. You can also not care on PC, like lots of people do.

And hardly no one uses SLI or even recommends it, precisely because it's annoying.

I don't see how you can state that it's any easier to troubleshoot a console. Usually your only feedback is a generic error code which if you Google refers to 20 different problems all with the same error, or an LED blink code which is equally vague.

Sure, PCs have their own unique problems that consoles don't suffer from (e.g. malware on Windows) but I find that PCs typically have much more descriptive error codes, and usually lack the kind of design flaws present in consoles (e.g. Xbox 360 RRoD due to insufficient cooling).

And since the hardware is fixed games don't have incompatibilities. None of the "this version of the driver causes this but that version of the driver causes that" issues. No worrying about system requirements. If it sold for the system, it will play.

Like you said, it's an appliance and I never have to think about it. You buy a game for the PS4 and it works on your PS4 and that's all there is to it.

Easy solution:

You can treat your PC like a console. Just clue everything so that you can't maintain and upgrade it.

Now you have PC that is like a console. Buy a new one when this is not good enough.

This is not what freedom of choice is about (to me). What I care about is the amount of power they yield over my experience. In Linux their power is low. Windows? Mac? Too high for my taste.

Right now my infant child wields "absolute power" over my life so the convenience and time savings of a console is worth it to me.

Oh this state of things can change faster than the duration of your lifetime, so you should care.

I'm with you in general (PC Gamer here) but your example does not really work well. There are many games only available on Steam and not GOG, and while you get most Steam games (but not all) on Humble Bundle, Humble Bundle only gives you a Steam key so you are back to Steam and its potential issues.

Unfortunately, because of Steam's predominance in PC Gaming, you are more of less stuck with the same problems as the PS4, as in "if it does not work, suck it up". There is no other store platform on PC that has the breadth of choice of Steam.

No, you can download the game directly from Humble Bundle but sometimes (often) they also give you a steam key.