Think the Steam model is good and you're okay with owning something digitally forever because the price is low?
Put your $400 toward a gaming PC. It's upgradeable, everything is free in terms of online service, the deals make up for what you'll spend upfront. You can play with console controllers in most games. The more you think about it the more you know it makes a lot of sense.
My main hesitations are:
1. Still tricky to buy a PC that fits and blends into my TV stand. Not a lot of shelf space, and I don't want one on the floor next to it. I'm very OCD about how things look in my house. I'm also not clear on how/whether they work in terms of needing/not needing a wireless keyboard and mouse ever as I don't really want to have to find a place to stash those.
2. Most of my favorite games are console exclusives still. I'd miss out on stuff like Gears (only the first went to PC), Uncharted, Last of Us etc. etc. if I didn't have a console. Where as I can play those and the stuff that goes PC like Skyrim, Bioshock etc. on consoles and don't really miss much as most PC exclusives are MMOs or RTS games or Sim games that I don't play anyway.
The Steam pricing system is awesome though. If they made a Steambox console that was reasonably priced I may got that route and just deal with missing the exclusives.
Really though, I just hope you end up being right about the PS4 not having restrictive DRM and I can just pick that up.
Yeah, I'd pick one up eventually, especially if the starting price is $400 or less.
Probably I'd wait to finish out my backlog on PS3 and then move after a price drop/revision, for sure. I mean how else am I going to play fighting games with the GGT?
As for Gears? Unless MS changes their policy or you concede to be abused by their DRM, you won't be playing any more Gears games already. Yes, you'll miss out on Uncharted, or whatever Sony exclusives you might want to play, but you missed out on most of those without knowing what you were missing until your 360 mishap and adoption of a PS3. I'm not saying never get a PS4, just maybe consider PC as another option.
Yes, you'd need to have a keyboard or mouse of some sort -- but if you did it right, you could just use your iPad to launch most games once your PC is built. I fully plan on controlling my gaming PC by the netbook that sits here with me most of the time and getting a wireless/keyboard mouse for games that are better off being controlled by those.