I'd say Pyro's right to some degree. I mean I hate Steam, and I especially hate tying my games to unnecessary restraints and paying money for things without any physical substance, but when you think about it, the more the consoles go that route, the worse it can potentially be. With Steam, you do at least have this sense that it's going to continue to be there rather than just being abandoned, having the servers shut down, becoming something that ceases to exist when the next new iteration of <whatever> comes out.
Of course, I disagree fundamentally with the existence of any of those things, because if you wait long enough, every last one of them will cease to exist, very likely within your lifetime, and all those things you bought will go up in smoke unless you diligently preserve them yourself (because no company is inherently invested in preservation). But if given the choice, I'd probably put more faith in Steam—put more faith in having my PC games around, playable, downloadable for a longer period of time—as opposed to anything that's likely to happen on consoles in the next while. Not because there's any proof that the things we've invested in are going to disappear, but because there <i>is</i> proof that the focus for all these platforms is on making money via what's new, pushing the new products which are at the higher price points, not ensuring that you're able to play the old. While I can't say Steam cares about that either, at least the PC platform itself continues to be a stable thing by virtue of what it is. Archiving games is just part of it because it's open, because it isn't really a product, it's an assemblage of products governed only by whatever software you happen to be using. That leaves people room to do stuff. We have DOSbox and GOG. We have a large number of people who care about keeping those things active and ongoing, accessible. We have people who, with the right tools, can keep games going by putting up their own servers and such.
So despite my misgivings (and believe me, even though I spend a lot of money on iOS games, the cheapness and the throw-away quality of a lot of the games has a lot to do with that, I'm not under any illusions about the reliability of those expenses down the road), PC is clearly where it's at for me too, for a lot of the same reasons Pyro talked about. I'm not nearly as invested as he is, nor do I have the faith that he does in it, but if we're choosing between devils, I think you could do worse.
The tradeoff is that I think Steam is a giant... er, steaming pile of shit, as is iTunes, where I've had pretty good experiences with Sony and Microsoft this generation. Even Nintendo. As convenience goes, I'd say the consoles are a far better bet. But not so much in terms of consideration for the future. Shitty as Steam is, I think the integrity of the library is less of a worry.
EDIT - I think he's right about DLC, too. I don't remember anyone being too excited about it. Most people were either somewhat neutral or were fuming about it. I think most of the people on board with it now are younger kids, people with no money worries, or people who do absolutely nothing with their lives except play games (especially those who heavily invest in individual titles for really long periods of time).
I wonder if DLC lived up to expectations, and whose expectations.
