Look, back in the days of old and yore awonder, consoles had a graphical style that was decidedly different from what you'd get on home computers and PCs. Yes, back in the day there were pretty much at least half a dozen competing computer systems around at all times, not including dad's boring but very expensive PC.
If you were alive and beyond pooping your pants during the times of the Commodore 64, the ZX Spectrum, the Atari ST, the various inarnations of the Amiga or the Apple II were what people used to play games on, and PC graphics were mostly still made up of ASCII characters of sorts, and their screens came in green or amber with the only other colour being black.
The rise of arcade games was, for at least two decades, the apex of where it was at, technically speaking. Home computer ports of popular arcade games were always peacemeal, downsized, ugly and shoddy with but few exceptions that brought that arcade feeling home in a satisfactory manner during the 8 bit dark ages. The 16 bit computers, especially the Amiga, brought with it a graphical fidelity for the masses that was mindblowing and very, very inspiring. By the time the PC caught up, EA - then still ECA - was established as freaks and hippies turned suit-and-tie entrepreneurs.
From the top of me silly head, I'd say that up to the PS2 era of things there were two rather different worlds in full effect, one being the PC games world, the other the console games world... with arcade games being on the decline. I'd wager to posit another thought: The PS3 and the XBOX killed off proper arcade games, as they killed many an arcade.
Sadly enough, both machines were nothing more than very, very limited PC gaming rigs with very peculiar processor choices that shaped the gaming world to come with predetermined on-rails experiences or tunnel vision approached to things, no matter how good the devs and programmers managed to hide that sorry fact from us.
The limitations of these new machines eventually started bleeding over to actual PC games, and their success is what brought with it plenty of other funny and ludicrous ideas. Rising costs pretty much killed off proper PC-specific development, the consoles becoming the lowest common denominator that was to be the mold to shape all things to come. You didn't see anything like the first Crysis duing the reign of PS3/360, the sequels are... sad little things compared to the first one, no matter how much coding expertise and love they put into them. The new generation of consoles might solve this one particular huge problem by - finally - raising the bar. They are no guarantee for actual good games, though. I'd still expect true cheap thrills and proper innovation to pop up in the minis/XBL games, if they are allowed to thrive on the new systems.
I am looking forward to the PS4 as it looks like it will allow for games to go back in time a bit, because with significantly more power and RAM at their disposal, devs can finally pick up the pieces again and start anew where PC gaming died a little a decade ago. Of course, the Xbox 3 (xbox one for people with severe dyscalculia and a dislike for capital letters) started out on a different path, building on the assumption that customers were stupid and easily caught, culled and turned into a constant revenue stream that was locked down and under total remote control of Big Brother Central.
So... with consoles being nothing but locked down, glorified and mostly single-purpose PCs these days, your argument is invalid. The cake of having multiple systems to choose from has been a lie ever since the 360 and the PS3 were released, with the only random exception being Nintendo's output of fun and weird.
Where's that guy with his non-sequitur false dichotomy and his army of strawmen? I miss him.
