I get where both sides are coming from.

On the one hand, buying a console and a reasonably spec'd laptop is clearly the better value. I did this during college, and both my laptop, and my console both lasted about a decade without requiring any upgrades. I did this again with the PS4. You wind up spending far less than you otherwise would trying to keep a gaming pc reasonably up to date, and both devices are optimized for their usage.

On the other hand? At some point most of us will realize that we've been successful enough that we don't have to optimize for value, and we can choose 'all of the above'. I now have a PS5 AND a stupidly overspec'd AI / gaming desktop. I've enjoyed having both.