In a lot of ways, computers are better for games, like the sheer power and graphical capability of top-end machines. But in the end, you hear of people complaining at high prices for next-gen consoles but when you think of it, that next gen console costs less than the highest range GFX card. PCs may offer better control over games thanks to the WSAD keyboard and mouse too, but there are some games that are just better with a controller, hence the reason they invented PC pads and made it so the 360 wired pad can be used on XP.
But as Ex said, there are numerous problems with a PC, hard drive space for example, some of today's games are absoloutly HUGE in terms of how much space they need, I remember a while ago looking at a newly released game and asking how long it would be before games started to need a gigabyte of hard drive space. Turns out it was far shorter than I expected. Plus any number of things can go wrong or you may not meet the specs required for the game, plus if you upgrade too much, you lose your old favourites due to your PC now being too good to run them.
Consoles, on the other hand, are ready to go at all times, all you need to do is plug in three things, the power cord, the video cable and the controller. Then insert your game and start playing, no installing, no hard drive, just instant gaming. Consoles never need to be upgraded, seeing as game makers find new ways to strech the capabilities of the consoles in future games. Rather than with PC games where the latest one will push your PC to the limits, console games start off as launch titles which only use about 20% of the potential of the machine and steadily get better as they learn what it's capable of.
I do agree with Knev to some levels with being a Hardcore gamer, but I think it's more in stages, you have gamers who are hardcore to the point of being plain sad when they play 24/7 with no girlfriend, job or friends. Then you have lesser versions of this, people who still take a break at some point even if it is just to sleep. Then you have people like me, who play all the time at home, but I have priorities, oddly enough gaming is one of the lower catagories, below eating, drinking, working, sleeping and seeing my fiance. I do love to play games whenever I can, but I limit myself and stop playing when I need to do something else, if there is a good reason, I am surprisingly easy to tear away from a game.
But there is another kind of gamer in the world, best known to many people (especially those of an RPG background) as munchkins. These are the people who get a game, find all the cheats for it, and then beat the game in the stupidest way possible, like putting on God Mode and Inf Ammo then beating it with only the weakest weapon in the game. To me, that isn't achievement, it's not the way the makers designed the game, you're not playing a game to enjoy it, nor even to beat it as fast as possible, you're playing the game to brag to others that you've finished it and cross off another game on your list of games.
This is what I like about a feature of the Xbox 360, the Gamerscore system, basically each game has a set number of points avaliable (usually 1000 or so) and you get these points from doing certain things, some of the points are gotten for finishing the game, but the majority of the points come from getting all the extras and unlockables avaliable, encouraging you to get everything in the game to increase your overall score.
In responce to your point about consoles and shooter games Ex, you are correct, consoles are not best designed for shooter games. I remember all the problems I had with Killzone and Halo, but I found that it was partly my lack of experience with the method of control and partly it wasn't done correctly. It hasn't been until I played Black for PS2, CoD2 and Condemned for the 360 that I realised that things had changed, shooters worked on consoles now, and they worked well. In fact, in some ways there are certain aspects of shooters that can't be reproduced in PCs. Condemned, for example, if an enemy does a berserk attack on you (leaps on you and goes furious) you have to move both control sticks around quickly and in all different directions, now this works because it builds on your own desperation to get free. But that would be impossible with a PC, that is the equivalent of randomly moving the mouse around and hammering the WSAD keys in random sequences, it just doesn't have the feel.
I think consoles just feel more into the game, because you are holding something and controlling the game with small movements of your thumbs that you hear no sounds from, rather than the light click of when you use the keyboard/mouse combo. Personally I could compare CoD2 on PC and 360 and I would say I feel more involved in the 360 version, for some though, this may be a bad thing, the whole computer games aren't meant to be real arguement.
