what people always forget tho is that you might pay say £1,000 for a PC that now (since Conroe launch anyhow) will give you what a 360 does in performence, but if you do buy a lot of games, you'll save almost the difference in the long run........ok you can buy second hand, but a lot of people dont, they buy brand new (if they didnt there wouldnt be second hand games for the others to buy..lol), so if someone gets their console games for the £45 average price and the PC user gets them for the £30 average price, thats £15 a game, so only 6 games later and you make up £100....factor in that most extras for PC games are given free as patches with only full blown expansions costing more you can happily add another £5 say per game for what the 360 costs you in MS points to upload a few new cars or something......now i'd say most owners of either console or PC will buy around 8 games a year as an average (some less, some a lot more) so over say 3 years thats around 24 games so you'd be looking at the 360 ends up costing you around £400-£500 more........then consider the PC allows you to do use it for a lot more than just the games and the extra few hundred difference is soon made up.....
so both are as good as each other, if you literally only want a cheap box to play games on now and again and are not likely to buy more than a few games, get a 360.......if you want to go hardcore with your gaming, plus do work/study etc then a PC is probably a more suitable investment.......(btw, by hardcore with gaming, i mean play what you buy, download extra bits, mods, possibly make maps, or even mods yourself...really get stuck in basically)
anyhow, just my 2 bits worth...heh