Millions walked away from the Wii without buying a new console. And Millions more would have no issue with abandoning console gaming and AAA gaming altogether.
The Wii has a special role to play. It managed to attract a large crowd of non console gamers, or as I like to call them: The Wii Sports Crowd. The system was a novelty and a pop culture phenomenon. Nintendo messed up and lost that crowd as quickly as it came, no big surprise.
But that's not the usual console situation. Of course, if you go broke or other life circumstances change somebody might no longer be interested in gaming.
But Sony is targeting the same, loyal customer base they are building for 26 years now. Those people grew up with gaming and they won't leave it behind that easily.
Many just bought console games because they had the console already.
No. You do not posses a console by accident or sheer luck.
People deliberately buy a console to buy games. It's an active, rational decision. Now if you happened to get one for free. Great.
But people putting down pre orders for PS5 yesterday know what they are actively getting. Nobody will wake up in January 2021 and a ps5 will teleport magically on top of their morning cereals. "Ah well, now that its here I might as well buy a couple of games."
People are buying a PS5 to buy games. A big difference to what you are describing.
Also, nearly 95% of Playstation and Xbox exclusive games came to PC in this gen anyway, so it was easy to walk away.
For you and for me (actually I never left PC gaming). But why do you think that big walk away has not happened yet?
Because PCs are not an option for everybody.
Nothing beats comfort and low entry prices. PCs will never be as simple as consoles and that's great. I don't want my PC experience to be regulated by companies. I want to think about my hardware choices, I want to have to play around with settings, I want to be free in choosing whom I pay for my software.
That's what makes PC gaming great: but that doesn't appeal to everybody and forums (especially this one) is not representative of the majority of gamers.
My youngest cousine (25) knows nothing about pc hardware, even the term GPU is going over his head. He is buying a PS5 and mentioning PC gaming brings out his: "Nah PS3/4/5 is good enough." And that's fine.
PC gaming might be growing, but it is just a part of this industry and will never dominate it.