Between designing a game for a buttload of variables in terms of each person's computer setup, to software piracy it's no wonder so many are turning to the console market.

It constantly amazes me that people talk about software piracy killing the PC game business and act as though consoles are somehow safe from it. If you actually look, pirated copies of x-box and PS2 games outnumber the amount of pirated PC games on the internet.

Just as you can get any PC game illegally, you can get any console game you want illegally as well.

I also have to agree with Shataan on the system variations when it comes to programming. There are only two video card makers that both have unified driver solutions and both of those use D3D, so they really only have to program for D3D and debug for 2 drivers, not for each individual card.

There's really only one sound card company out there (however much I wish there were more), the rest are onboard solutions that all use essentially the same chipsets and instructions. There's been very little advancement in PC sound reproduction in the last couple years and I doubt that will change any time soon.

There are only two CPU manufacturers to take into account and neither requires that you implement their proprietary special features to work.

Beyond those, everything else is standardized. There's nothing special you have to do for different motherboards, hard disks, dvd-rom's, etc. to get them working.

There are only three areas that I've seen common problems with in PC game development and only one of them has anything to do with game programming.

1) Users that don't know how to properly maintain their systems. (Spyware/adware/virii/driver updates)

2) Poorly made or hard-coded routers that interfere with online games. (Largely from Linksys' lower end line in my experience)

3) Constantly advancing copy protection schemes that cause more problems than they solve.