As has been touched upon, but not in depth from this perspective, is that PCs are hard to develop for because of their variable hardware. PCs are a family of different assemblies of hardware designed to run Windows (and Linux, etc.), but my PC's hardware is probably nothing like your PC's hardware and is nothing like your neighbor's PC's hardware... this makes Quality Assurance/playtesting a *****, because they can playtest on 50 different rigs, and it'll all seem to run okay..... but then they release the game, and someone with yet a different setup from what was playtested on will discover some weird software/hardware conflict that creates a crash-inducing bug.
The reason why PC games in particular require patching is NOT because Developers are "lazy" -- it's just simply impossible in the current PC market to try and design a game that is guaranteed to work on every permutation of hardware combinations possible. Some bugs just aren't going to be found until release... although fortunately, as long as there's detailed bug-reporting out there, devs can eventually get out a fix. But this in turn requires support for a product long past release date. And while I generally appreciate long term dev support for a game, from a business perspective, it's a sink of time and staffing--and therefore, money--so it's something many publishers want to spend less and less time on. (Especially when all you get for your trouble is a bunch of gamers calling you a bunch of lazy dumbasses for not getting it right the first time... regardless of how much work you might have put into it.)
Bottom line: PCs are a pain in the butt to develop for. A console has a fixed set of hardware, so most bugs are likely to be caught in the QA stage, well before release.
All that being said, the PC game industry may be smaller compared to the console industry, but I don't see it going away entirely. As long as people continue to own PCs, there are going to be PC games. What are you posting to this message board with? A PC, most likely (yes, I am sure someone's being clever and posting via their homemade PDA/coffeemachine, but hopefully you get my general point). And maybe it won't run Crysis (what will?) but there's probably a huge hoard of games you could be running on it right now, old, new, independent, major, freeware, shareware, from Minesweeper to The Sims to Fallout 3. Any console you buy is an added expense to the machine you already own that can be easily used for at least some degree of gaming (in addition to netsurfing, word processing, graphic design, etc. etc. etc.). Heck if nothing else, all games have to be developed ON a PC before they're ported and packaged for a console, so it's easy enough to design a game that can be played on the machine you designed it with.
That being said, of course PC developers and publishers would do far better for themselves to develop games for "average" PCs rather than slightly more top-of-the-line gaming rigs, but I suppose they feel torn between accessibility and being able to flex their own design chops using the best of what's available. And of course the top-of-the-line gaming rigs are owned by hardcore gamers who demand games with the best the current technology has to offer. For a long time, I think PC game developers have worked to please that demographic when really, they would be much better off designing slightly less shiny games that are accessible by a far larger number of consumers. (And then the top-of-the-line gaming rigs would not seem as "necessary" to the people who seem to think that they are.)
Consoles will still win more sales because they are at least presented to function more simply than a PC. That's the basic end of it.
And, I will posit the rebellious and unthinkable notion that PC games and console games can and will exist peaceably side by side for many, many years to come, and that people can in fact play and enjoy both (or play a port from one to the other). The gamers that prefer one or the other may not exist peaceably side by side because many (though of course not all) gamers seem to feel they need to be "right" about what are in reality, truly personal gaming preferences, but the games themselves will keep coming. Some may be marketed more zealously than others, that's all.
(As an aside, for the record, I'm a fairly hardcore PC gamer, but I think consoles have their place and I can certainly understand why console gamers are in the majority. Oddly, the only console I own is a PS2 and indeed, I like it for its plug'n'play simplicity. I haven't invested in a next-gen console precisely because if I want a machine with a shiny graphics card and internet access and online interaction and does my taxes for me... well, I already have a PC. I don't feel a desire to spend $300 on a second one, particularly one that will look crap hooked up to my old analog TV)
