Console games certianly have their place.  That, I wont argue.  I have most gaming consoles available and have multiple PC's on my network.

I think that your going overboard to write off PC Gaming.  While I would conceede that the "Hayday" of PC gaming could well be over, it isn't going to disapear.

I don't think I said that playing on a 54" screen that was split looked like ass.  But playing anything on a split screen is annoying.  Its easy to get distracted by whats going on in another persons view, and I dont know about your family... buy in my house, my wife would much rather I were not right in the middle of our living room playing.  Its nice to be out away from the middle of everything in my office where I can use my THX Cert speakers and bask in the glory of automatic gunfire.  Again, not something my wife is very keen on.

In the past, the major aspect of console gaming advantage were DRIVING and SPORTS games.  These titles consistantly suck on PC because they are more fun when your playing with 4-8 other people that round out your team and PC controllers have never been as well designed as the Sony DualShock.

Driving games are in the same boat.  Best on a huge screen with a good SONY controller to drive with.  You cant beat the dual analog controls.

FPS, RTS, RPG etc have always been best hashed out on PC.  The controlls are better with mouse/keyboard and also, these are almost always MP games, and playing on broadband was the way to go.

Now, I do understand that MS and SONY have and or will have mouse / keyboard options and they are certianly gering up for online gaming.  But I certianly don't think that it will kill PC gaming.

Most people that are serious about gaming would throw themselves into traffic if they had to go 4 to 5 years between hardware upgrades.  And on the flipside... how excited would you be if new console systems came out every 2 years?

When I was working retail at a computer shop during college it always cracked me up to hear parents come in bitching about having to buy a new console for their kid.  "The Playstation JUST came out" we would hear, daily.  "Yes, just 5 years ago".

And finally... if you just want to play a lan game Dys with your kids or such I believe that you can swing that with 1 copy.  You just cant get online, because thats when it will check your key.

An,

Well, my older boy is away in college and my younger one is soon to go.  So,  I do not have a dog in this fight (so to speak).  But not too long ago we played one copy behind a router on everything (one version of Sierra update nixed it for a short time).  Our favorites were Quake 3 and Half Life mods:  DOD in particular.  I still bought six to eight PC games per year.  The point being is that Publishers have long since been aware of one cd key behind a router and it was an accepted practice.  The punkbuster issue (my opinion) was more about checking cd keys than zapping the cheaters.   Worse still, punkbuster still ain't right.

They have cut off their nose to spite their face.  And I believe that as time moves on with console online gaming it will nix PC games.  The trade off to not getting improvements is the ability to play without the game constantly crashing or having you computer scanned without really knowing what some outside business is really searching for.  Let's face it, how many outside companies gather information about you and assure you that they keep it confidential... when in reality they a selling everything they get to the highest bidder.