WIll consoles ever return to their glorious past of strong hardware sold at a loss?

Since when can a $400 console compete with a $1,000 PC? Even with the spike in graphics card prices, you can still build a sub-$800 PC with console specs. Before prices shot up you could easily build a sub-$500 PC with console specs.

Anyway, on-topic, no they'll never return to huge losses on hardware. Either someone is going to finally get the Steam Machine idea right and start churning out PC-level consoles with a real OS, or they'll focus on making game streaming devices that can run high-end graphics from a different machine. Or both. Either way, traditional consoles are being squeezed out.