Since their inception, video games have been limited by two major factors: the capabilities that each era of hardware provided and the ability of developers to work around the hardware's limitations and get the most out of it. This led to the introduction of amazing games at times when it would have otherwise seemed technically impossible. It has also facilitated continuous development that has led us to a moment in which photorealism has started to become just "a stones throw away".
With this in mind, video game consoles have also played a key role. I know that many of us would rather play on PCs, but consoles have been the great engine of the industry, to the extent that their current influence is so great that they have monopolized development cycles. In years past, games were created exclusively for PCs to truly take advantage of their platforms' hardware; today everything is focused on the leading consoles of each generation and the ramifications of this are quite clear.
Consoles have had very positive impacts on the video game world, but they have also had negative ones. The life cycles of consoles have been increasing considerably which, along with console exclusive improvements, have ended up affecting the use of the latest generation of PC hardware and have slowed down the evolution of video games overall.