I don't agree that consoles have held PC gaming back necessarily. In fact, I think consoles have allowed gaming as a whole to prosper and I'll tell you why.

Consoles appeal to a much wider audience and with a wider/larger audience, comes more games really. With more games comes more variety, more innovation, and more fun.

But why do consoles appeal to a larger audience? Well, first of all it's easier to set up and while it might not be as much bang for your buck, it's cheaper to get into. When you build a gaming PC, you have to know quite a bit about hardware specs. It's not common knowledge. With consoles you just pick it up at the store, plug it into the TV, and start playing games.

The second reason is the perception of PC gamers. They're considered a bit more "nerdy" or "anti-social" (which of course is far from the truth many times). Where you can sit in the living room for hours playing video games and no one bats and eye, if you spend hours a day on PC you're suddenly a shut in. It's just like my in-laws can spend entire evenings watching TV in the living room, but if I spend an equal amount of time on the computer I catch flack. It's not fair, but there's some social stigma there.

Without consoles, I don't believe gaming would be where it is right now, which is in the mainstream. It would be a much more niche market and there simply wouldn't be as many games to choose from. It can get frustrating when devs lower standards because of consoles' inferior hardware, but just think that those games might not even exist if it weren't for consoles. I know personally, I'd rather have a crippled but good game, than no game at all.