It’s not even that much more expensive to just build a PC that has similar strength to the PS5. At least not anymore, now that prices are coming back to reasonable numbers. Used parts aren’t even necessary. $500 plus the $80 to $160 a year you’re forced to pay for online, and a PS5 ends up being quite expensive. You could build a solid PC for $700 nowadays, and it will end up being cheaper in the long run due to free online and not needing a whole new system every generation, (and pirating).

Of course, taking this route comes with downsides as well. Nobody can deny using a console is going to be far simpler than a PC, so even if consoles were more expensive, I believe they’d still have a large consumer base. Games will run better on console than they will a similarly powerful computer, since they can be optimized for one or two sets of hardware instead of a hundred. And the biggest issue is of course that building your own PC and buying all the parts comes with a lot of research and some risk.

So I agree with you for the most part, but I disagree that PC part prices are still the big issue they were 2 years ago.