Yeah it really comes down to online gameplay. The _only_ thing keeping me in microsoft's orbit is online gaming.

That's sort of like asking a motorbike enthusiast why they don't just drive a car instead.

There's a big difference in the input scheme between PC and consoles. Playing with a controller might not be satisfying for someone used to keyboard and mouse. The latter also provides a higher skill ceiling for competitive play.

The lower end hardware used in consoles also does not allow for high framerates and high resolution monitors, while with PC gaming one can get as much performance as they're willing to pay for.

In addition to what sibling comment wrote well, there are also a bunch of games that aren't "couch-friendly" and not even available on console.

I like consoles (borderline prefer them to PCs) but there are some experiences I can only have on PC.

Another aspect is that sticking a console onto my desk and plugging it to my PC monitor wouldn't be very practical, and I don't want to commit my living room to my gaming whims, and even less want to get another TV+couch-like setup in my office.

I would buy a PS5 if I didn't already have a gaming rig tbh. For PC I enjoy the tinkering and the ability to basically do anything with it, but nowadays the cost compared to console is stupid and after a long day's work the last thing I want to do is see another desktop UI. Different toys for different purposes.

Last time I saw them they were having alien input controls. I used to press M for portable Medkit. And J for Jetpack. And all keyboard is meaningful. Stand-alone gaming systems are having limited amount of buttons on their alien input controls and packing diverse actions into disgusting combos. This could probably be solved by Cronus Zen.

The only good thing about alien input control was smooth movement. Wooting Two emulates this by pretenting to be both human and alien input controls. Would be nice if such keyboards would be more widespread.

where do you plug in the mouse?