Oh, I know everything will be affected by the coming price increases. But the thing is, on PC you have a lot of options as far as getting games to play compared to consoles where you're locked into their ecosystem and have to pay whatever price they want you to. So it's a higher up front cost for less cost later. And you can choose to pay less for tech that's older and will run things at lower settings. With consoles you have no choice.
Oh, good point, I forget about that! They actually went asymmetrical first with the Gamecube, then symmetrical with the Wii pro controller. The Switch is asymmetrical out of necessity, and the Switch pro controller probably is because the joycons are. So it really is only Microsoft always preferring asymmetrical.
After the Switch 2 reveal I saw the writing on the wall that console gaming was going to be too expensive for me, but I still wanted a way to easily play on the TV with a controller. The Steam Deck has been awesome for that. I'm fine with playing older games on it and reserving the rare new demanding games I actually want to play for the PS5. Next gen I might just move to PC for demanding games the way things are going.
For me it came down to affordability more than anything else. The cost of the other PC handhelds don't make sense to me considering the battery life. Might as well get a laptop at that point. The fact that the Steam Deck doesn't use Windows and has the best community support were bonuses.
Valve and Sony are the only ones that did symmetrical. Symmetrical was actually first with the DualShock for the PS1, but the 360 controller being popular and commonly used for PC apparently made googly sticks more common. The Switch at least has a justification in that the joycons can be removed and used by themselves, necessitating the stick placement.
Yeah, dancing baby was 1996, 9 years before 2005, which is an eternity in internet years. Leeroy is one of the internet's older memes, sure, but way too new to qualify as one of the oldest.
All that matters is when the game was first released anywhere. SMW - 11/21/90 in Japan, Sonic - 6/21/91 in Europe (and boy, is it weird that Europe got it first!)