And that in spite of some bad apples still going through the gates, the large majority of flappy bird clones never makes.
Incumbent consoles are trying to dig themselves out of this perception now, but they got it very deservedly.
The average game on a console is going to be higher quality than the average game on PC because the average game on PC has to include the game I made in Visual Basic 6 when I was in high school. With no gatekeeper ensuring basic quality, my VB6 game is every bit as legitimate of a game as Battlefield 5. They both hold the title of "PC Game", but only one of them could ever be called "Xbox Game" because Microsoft would never allow my game on their console.
Technical limitations that hold developers back are only part of it. Another issue is simply creative control of incumbent console owners. PC gaming doesn't have it, so creators can do whatever they want. And masterpieces are always a minority, no matter in what form of art.
Pre-crash there were tons of high quality artistic masterpieces on consoles too. But it was swimming in absolute garbage [1], turning a lot of customers off [2], losing their trust [3], and threatening the entire platform [4]. If you haven't followed any of these links yet, PC gaming still has that problem.
The argument isn't that PCs have more powerful hardware (the reality of which is debatable [5]). The argument is "do console makers guarantee quality better post-crash than they did pre-crash" and the answer is unequivocally yes. The question you then raised was "do console makers guarantee quality better than PC games" and I would still argue unequivocally yes. And then I would point out that PC gaming benefits from this, because if Activision wants Call of Duty to sell on consoles, they're going to make sure it passes Sony and Microsoft's quality standards, which then the PC game most likely will pass as well.
This isn't always true, of course, because there are plenty of times a game runs better on consoles than it does on PC [6]. That's probably what you refer to as "consolization", but again that's just missing the point. People buy consoles these days because they work and they work consistently. That's directly the result of the post-crash quality control that console makers implemented.
[1] https://kotaku.com/unfinished-steam-game-abandoned-after-tho...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/4/15172908/valve-steam-explo...
[3] https://www.greenmangaming.com/newsroom/2017/09/27/valve-rem...
[4] https://kotaku.com/the-people-fighting-to-keep-crappy-games-...
[5] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
[6] http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.937131-Let-me-...
> That's probably what you refer to as "consolization"
No, I refer to cut down design, oversimplified interfaces, lack of depth and etc. which were characteristic for console games, backfiring to PC games, when developers don't want to do extra work and simply use "one size fits all" method to save time.
Technical limitations is only part of the problem. The bigger one I'd say is the incumbents' control over the platform and heavy mass market bend. Quality has many meanings, and poor art (in many meanings of the word art, not simply graphics like you might think) caused by mass market commercialization can justifiably be understood as reduced quality.
So, I'll stick to what I said. Incumbent consoles didn't save games from worse quality, they actually made them worse.
For example in demoscene the art is to make these old consoles or computers do wonderful things that seem impossible on such limited resources.
Did it? Lot's of gamers see consoles as something that holds developers back from using better hardware, since they need to target 5 year old systems. Quality both artistic and technical isn't something consoles can claim to be leading in. And clearly, "consolization" in its various forms isn't something gamers appreciate, when it spills out into PC gaming.