OP might need to learn HIS history before lecturing PC gamers. Were consoles there before PC? Kinda. Prior to 1977, there were consoles that played variations of PONG for the television, and they were cheaper and more common than the 'kit' hobbyist computers of the era. But the Apple II and the Atari 2600 / VCS both hit the market the same year IIRC, and made the same kind of splash. And while the Apple could be used for things other than gaming... but it was a popular game platform.

And things grew from there. Even before the videogame crash of 1983 which spelled the doom of consoles until the NES rode to the rescue, computer gaming was a force. The C64, Apple II, and Atari computers rocked the world and had the best coin-op ports, and games that were completely beyond the capabilities of the consoles.

Consoles held dominance through the 1990s, although even then PC gaming was awesome... just not as lucrative. Consoles, in general, had better / smoother graphics and scrolling due to their dedicated hardware. However, PC gaming kept pace with generally different styles of games, less focused on the high-speed 'twitch' styles of games with more emphasis on games that required more RAM, storage, and processing power: Strategy games, deep RPGs, graphic adventures, simulators / simulations, etc.

Even then, the game devs pushed the 'moving target' of PC hardware to the max. And the console developers (often the same studios) struggled to produce adequate ports of the PC best-sellers, like many of the games mentioned here by @SCShipyards. 

In the mid-to-late 90s, DirectX and popular 3D acceleration hit the scene, and things shifted once again in the PCs favor. The PC became the 'prestige' gaming system... higher quality across the board, but also pretty expensive. And it really took until around 2000 or so for 3D acceleration to become 'common' enough that games could be developed with the assumption that the target system could support it, and didn't have to fall back to very slow software rendering.

Now, there are lots of arguments that favor consoles as the dominant force in gaming, especially during that window of time where DOS ruled the PC side. But even then, PC gaming was still a powerful influence in the videogames industry, not just taking a back seat to the consoles. No console company could afford to 'dictate' - even if they pretended to in their marketing.