Costs extra is putting it mildly: it was the most expensive part that was used the least. It's also important that the wiiu controller was made for new games (that would use the controller). The steambox controller is designed to properly play the whole backlog of steam games.
Makes sense. However there hasn't been almost any game actually taking advantage of it. Trine 2 is one of only few examples as it not only made playing with wizard almost better than with mouse but also made playing with other characters better experience than with regular stick.
Even Nintendo Land focuses more on other stuff than screen being actual touchscreen. What I did notice as for single player games that use gamepad as primary screen you just newer look at TV screen at that point. For asynchronous playing it does work however.
As for PC, well, frankly if I want to play a console game, I want to play it on a console, not on a PC. Time was PC's offered a lot of unique style and types of gameplay, but today it's mostly console games with higher resolution or framerate. I'm not going to spend as much as a console just to buy a graphics card that will last me a few years. Compared to ~20 years ago when you could play something like Ultima 7 on a PC and have a truly original and worthwhile experience, whereas if you instead tried the SNES "port" and got some cut down, censored, nearly unplayable pile of crap, it's a completely different situation. Yeah, maybe I could have spent a lot of money on a computer and got Fallout 3 looking nicer but I'd rather just play it on 360 and be able to sit back and relax and watch it on the big TV instead of hunched over a keyboard and mouse. I actually did try it both ways, and I'll take the console, thanks. Reliance on online DRM and Steam and stuff like that, also a huge turn off.
It's not only about higher resolution and framerate even if most PC gamers like it that way. You can get cheaper rig, turn down resolution and put settings to lowest possible and get console like experience. I did that with AMD APU when I started playing with PC, before that I usually just ran emulators as nothing else worked except them and some Valves games.
Users usually just assume PC has to be about graphics and sitting on the desk. I usually put HDMI cable and use controller to play from sofa as it's much cheaper and easier to get games for PC but still I had to use mouse to select and boot game up. That's why I love that Valve has actually acknowledged this and now I can simply go to my sofa and press home button from controller and Big Picture boots up and it's pretty much like using console from that point without any hassle (if game is completely controller supported). I also use 3G as my main internet connection and only games that had any problems where ones using GFWL which is dead now. Steam if game is even once activated it works always, then there's places like GOG which has no DRM in anything and it's easy to buy them, add them to steam and then boot them from Big Picture.
At this point it's pretty much same whether to buy game to pc or console but then when you think about it: with PC you can spend your extra money to better parts and get better experience and with consoles you have to buy whole new machine and another more expensive copy of the same game to get better experience or if machines backwards compatible you get pretty much exactly same experience with slight disadvantages or advantages.
But again: if you are only going to play that game then and there and maybe even resell it forward then all of that may not even matter. Especially if user is gun shy with online activations and managing hardware.
However my best experience transitioning from console to PC: Mirror's Edge.
Console it was allright and looked and played good, it even got trophys and everything.
Then played illegal copy with my just build cheap AMD APU machine (all my money went to that machine
) and I was amazed how much better it looked and felt.
Then I got better machine and sold old one so now I had nvidia card with PhysX and oh boy I laughed hysterically when glass got broken.
Now I got 144Hz monitor and 3D plasma. Some .ini config and game looked smooth as fuck and with stereo-3D I got that same hysterical laugh again when I jumped from roof to roof while looking down. Only disadvantage was I had to use my controller with TV so it felt so restricting with first person game.
I'm pretty sure if VR is going to be next thing that someone has already modded game to work with VR-headset and when I finally get one I will be laughing again.
..and I now own 4 legal copies of the Mirror's edge on PC. This is also why PC vs Console wars are so intense as PC gamers know how much better everything could be even if playing game then and there regardless of device should give almost exactly same experience.