> At some point I'd like to believe people would just stop paying Microsoft tax to play computer games...

I wish I could. The games I like aren't released anywhere else.

> Then I remember people pay tons of cash for their rigs that are obsolete within two years anyway.

This is false. A moderate gaming PC can last longer than a console. I used my previous rig for 4 years and now my wife is using it perfectly fine. It still has better visual fidelity than a console.

The only viable alternative is consoles.

Expensive gaming rigs - a bit less so than PC, but for equivalent hardware, about $400 cheaper at introduction, about equal once 1-2 years pass.

Obsolete in 2 years - check

Expensive software - much more so for consoles.

So right now the situation is that if you go for PC gaming instead of console, you'll have about the same expense, but 100 games for PC (and a powerful general purpose computer), and maybe 5-10 on console.

Plus you can upgrade parts of your PC during its lifetime, without having to replace the whole thing at once.

My GPU lasted me 5 years and then it broke. I now play games like Warframe on iGPU at 720p on the lowest settings.

It actually works quite well.