I got into PC gaming in ~2009 primarily because it is so much cheaper than console. Steam sales and Humble Bundle allowed me to buy so many more games for less money.
The initial cost upfront was higher than a console but if you want a lot of games it ends up being worth it.
Yeah, I was happily surprised to be reminded of that when I set up my NixOS Jovian box that I “consolified” by having it boot into Gamescope and the SteamOS interface.
It’s plugged into my TV, with a wireless controller, and I have direct access to around 800 games immediately.
There are consoles that don’t even have 800 games in their entire library and I have 800 I can play whenever I want, some of which I purchased almost two decades ago.
And those games do not die with each or every other generation of hardware. Almost my entire Steam library still runs on my latest machine.