Why are gaming consoles so popular

This post on Joe User tells the deep, painful truth about why people are flocking to game consoles rather than putting up with PC games:

I've been outright hostile to consoles for years but even I find myself starting to buy console games. Why? Because they work out of the box. I don't have to "Wait for the first patch" to play the games.

And PC games have a perfect storm of bad habits:

• First, I am expected to devote hundreds of megabytes to them. Okay, I can live with that.
• But then they expect me to keep the CD in the drive.
• And then I usually have to keep track of a little tiny paper serial number (usually taped to the back of the CD jacket).
• And all that so that I can play a game that needs a couple of patches to play.

And when the PC sales go down, what's the reported reason? Piracy of course. Yea, it's piracy. Sure.

All true. I used to play a fair number of PC games, but my interest has waned as their demands for system resources has increased. I no longer want to upgrade my machine every single time there's a new flipping game on the market! My son's machine, which is the fastest machine on our home network, still can't reliably run games like Diablo II or Quake III Arena, and it's more than twice as fast as my machine is.

A Pox on all their houses!