You are right Ian. Game consoles took almost everything out of real gaming. It is community, which creating game, not game producers. Most of games are that popular because of mods, upgrades, third party maps and cooperation. Look at Counter Strike, look at Custom maps in Warcraft 3, most of tournaments in Q1, Q2 and Q3 are played on third party maps. Not to mention, that in most of strategic games (which makes you to THINK) there is no chance to play using joypad - it's becoming nightmare. Where the heck is mouse and keyboard?!
If you take possibility of modyfinig or co-create games from most interested (players), you have to:
a) be insane
b) create something close to Holy Grail of gaming
Consoles are fancy, quick and looks nice on TV screen, but there is not real gaming anymore, not for older generation at least.
Besides - PC's do not crash, works fine if configured and installed properly and I belive you can have descent one for price of console anyway
PS. Yes almost all games right now are arcade games, nothing to make your brain working.