I don't see a reason to bother with Xbox, PS4, or Wii U (especially). Soon enough, all you will need is a cellphone and PC for all of the best gaming once game developers realize what they can do with them. At the moment, i'd say the best would be owning a PS4, 3DS, PC, and cellphone due to exclusives.
Yeah I thought that too, which is why the first eight gen console I bought was the PS4. For about 12 of the 14 months I've owned it it has sit under the TV gathering dust. My GF has used it to play her RPGs more than I have. This might change with the release of
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided for a bit, but since I bought it for a few titles and was disappointed (case in point -
Batman: Arkham Knight which for me was dire,
Bloodborne was alright for a bit but not something I'd want to play for more than 20 hours, too grindy) it's basically sitting there wasting my PS Plus membership.
It's easy to write off the Wii U. I did. I sneered at the low sales figures and the retreads of the same first party titles. Actually though, it's gotten more use in two weeks than the two months I initially owned the PS4 when I did actually bother with it. Because Nintendo realise having the most powerful console isn't always the driving factor. I prefer games that are fun and a bit of quirkiness and innovation, which the Wii U has a lot of. Also has pretty decent versions of
Human Revolution and
Arkham City so that's a nice bonus.
I don't even want to see this silly arguement that "I can't play on the couch wif muh compooter", it's not 2001 anymore. PCs have bluetooth wireless devices, wifi (faster than game consoles), small form factor cases, liquid cooling, and even tv tuner/windows media center capabilities. They can emulate all consoles. They can do video chat, streaming, teamspeak, third-party software, whatever man. And no i'm not preaching that PC master race BS, it's time to face the facts that computers are extremely flexible now.
Yeah that's great, they can do all the bells and whistles, everybody knows. It's barrier to entry issues though, lot of folks have no interest in building their own PC, or even having one built and putting in the hours to set it up with all the stuff you've listed. A cheap, easily solution like Chromecast or Fire TV or Apple TV work just as well for the media centre side, for example. The fact that computers are "extremely flexible now" is precisely the reason there are made-to-measure solutions like this.
Incidentally yes, PCs can emulate a lot of stuff well. But not perfectly, and the closer you get to modern hardware the more difficult emu that is both fast AND accurate becomes. I'll take Wii U proper hardware support for Wii/GameCube where I can't tell the difference between that and the original consoles over something like Dolphin, which although very good isn't quite there yet even on a decent spec PC.
To be fair, consoles offer exclusive games and convinience. It used to be that all that was needed for the common man to play video games was a cartridge/cd, power the console, power a tv, and push the power button. Gaming consoles aren't that simple anymore though because of accounts and settings setups and it's getting more complex. Ever see the power brick of an Xbox? Might as well get a PC at this point.
Still way easier to deal with the extra complexity of a modern console than a PC though, by far.
The only thing that cellphones, androids especially, need now is a standard for running software. Too many devices in the market which have 512mb of RAM and run on Android 0.5 Potato. Looking at you, cheapy chinese tablets from local general store. Once a standard is set, RIP handhelds (and by extension consoles).
People have been saying this sort of thing for years. It was even speculated that PS4/Xbone/Wii U would be the last of their kind because of various reasons like tighter regulation on consumer electronic energy draw. Yet here Sony and Micro$oft are, releasing buffed up versions of those in the form of the poorly-monikered Neo and Morpheus... I mean Scorpio. Hank Scorpio.
The need of a standard applies to PCs as well. Seriously people, stop playing games on craptops with Intel HDs.
Again some people don't need or care about max quality for all settings on their games as long as they're playable. The convenience of playing on a laptop that can be taken anywhere can easily outweigh being chained to a desk with a high spec tower PC (cos let's be honest, the small form factor ones you mentioned aren't always up to the task).