Consoles are obviously going to win more players than PCs and if that drives dollar-eyed executives to making console games exclusively then all the more market for independant PC game publishers. Nobody that uses a PC is going to stop using it just because they also have a console. I’ve got a PC, a PS2 and a Dreamcast (totally buffed out with periferals and what not).
I see my Dreamcast collection as a cautionary tale, a hedge, against buffing out my PS2 with elective or compulsive purchases. After discovering consoles via Dreamcast (I had a Genesis too but never got excited beyond Shadowrun and RoTK III), and going berzerk buying stuff, I pretty quickly tired of the kinds of games I could play even as I appreciated the variety I’d just aquired. Now I’ve got three big chests worth of stuff which I swear I’ll get back into one day, can’t bear to part with, and never touch.
My PS2 was an impulse buy triggered by a lust for GTA3 (which diverted me from an anticipated Xbox purchase - thankfully) but I managed to avoid buying wheels and fishing rods and the compulsion to buy several games of each genre I liked to have a ‘well rounded’ library. Instead I just picked and chose a few games I was pretty sure I’d like. I’ve ended up with about a dozen PS2 and PSX games most of which are not available on the PC and that I do return to from time to time. (Like, I hope, KOEI’s P.T.O. IV - latest purchase en route!).
Likely, after the market goes through the same initial adoption curve of heavy consumption you’ll probably see a drop off eventually as folks simply feel saturated. I don’t think we’re there yet with consoles as they’re cheaper, simpler to operate, and offer less demanding games so there’s a much larger potential market. Folks willing to discover and play PCs have been exploited pretty thoroughly I think and have already hit saturation. Most, IMHO, that become hardcore (or even specialized casual gamers) tend to find particular niches or titles they pay attention to rather than ‘computer gaming’ as a whole. As computer games are deeper and more extensible than console games this is going to be a phenomenon that lasts.
And, as a fan of extensible and user generated content as well as games featuring dynamic (hence replayable) engines, I can’t say I have a huge problem with that. We can say it costs lots of money to make a game but the reality is that anyone with skills can make a computer game. As more and more coders and designers, whether initially from the game industry or not, hit retirement there will be a base of creative folks out there who probably will get a kick out of designing the games they want to play or to create some legacy for themselves. The internet makes it quite possible for large numbers of these folks to seek each other out and pool efforts.
So, PC games vanishing from store shelves doesn’t bother me very much at all. As long as they don’t vanish all together and I suspect that’s simply never going to happen as long as computers, as we know them are in every home and office in the land.