There's so much irony here...

You know, about 10 years ago, I would've probably made a similar rant about the advantages of consoles. Nowadays, though, the difference between gaming on PC and on consoles tends to be a thin line. Every time I start playing something on my X360, the first thing to happen is a notification of a patch. The games *really* are much more buggy than they were on the previous console generation, I think they even crash more often than before. And when it comes to games aging very well, note that these days games are mostly about yearly iteration and sequels. No point ever playing Gran Turismo 3 or NHL 2005 again when the latest and the greatest versions are only available on the latest consoles. Funny thing, it also seems that the amount of console exclusive titles has diminished lately, whereas the selection and amount of PC exclusive titles (good ones, too) is going through the roof. The point about cheating is valid, though the single player modes have always been more important to me, and it's also worth noting that games on Steam are pretty good at blocking cheaters.

Long story short, the sad fact that those points have been rendered invalid as of late is the reason why consoles will be leaving my home soon :( had plenty of fun with them, there's no denying that, but things have been going downhill for a while and I don't think the direction is going to change.

"No monthly fee" is hardly a requirement for aggressive banning policies, though. Microsoft has been banning (paying) users from Xbox Live for eons for inconsiderate gamertags, behaviour etc., and that kind of ban is much more severe since it means no more online gaming EVER on that particular CONSOLE (not just user account). Note also that while it's "free to play" they still have to turn profit from their game, and right now they're actively turning customers away - even many of those dicks could be willing to purchase additional content. Microsoft can afford to be aggressive about this since it's running a whole platform with a dictatorship, but a free-to-play game could be quite a different case. I don't think Arenanet could simply replace micropayments with advertising.

A nice, cozy, Western country like the United States?

If you want to avoid all these, you pretty much don't have other choice than one of those OMIGOD SOCIALIST! wellfare states, and even then these are not guaranteed. Nitpicking aside, all these three problems seem to be a part of everyday life in the US, just in a (slightly) different scale.

Still, selling Windows licenses to OEMs continues to be Microsoft's meat and potatoes. So if everything goes catastrophically wrong, they lose their OEM customers AND they'll never break through to the tablet market... right?

Just some optimistic thinking, but from my (naive) point of view, Microsoft is making plenty of phenomenally bad business decisions in a row.