You are presenting the same old and incorrect arguments that have been used forever.
Gaming in general is pricey as most hobbies are especially if you are not just a casual gamer who buys a couple games a year. But overall PC gamers pay LESS for gaming content then console gamers do and tend to have way more options. The greed of big publishers however are trying to change this trend forcing us to pay MORE for less. What about PC hardware like you pointed out? Well no you don't need a current top of the line gaming PC every time a new game comes out. Let's look at L4D2 requirements since that's the game in question. They include a Pentium 4/128 MB vid card as a minimum requirement, which is extremely hardware friendly that most can run. And to say Xbox Lives match making servers are superior is a bit ridiculous. You are paying for a service that is inferior to what is already available on PC's that is free. Now if the games were hosted on a dedicated server I'd understand, but they are not. And match making in general isn't the funnest of experiences. It usually takes me 3-4 bad games on Live to get one good game. Whereas I can simply jump into one of my favorite servers and be done with it on the PC.
In the end though as you said it depends what the person wants.
