The argument always goes up that playing console games is "cheaper" than PC gaming mainly because the (incorrect) assumption that one needs even a 1,000$ rig to play 99% of modern PC games maxed out at high resolution. We'll after I've witnessed what Capcom's ridiculous DLC scheme along with DLC in general I have come to the assumption that we are just trading in one price point for another. For almost two decades my PC gaming needs have led to developers for the PC giving games extraordinarily long life spans compared to today's console games. Many times this came from including free additional content well after the initial launching of the game. Epic's UT3 content is a great example as it included almost TWO gigs worth of patches, fixes (yes VERY necessary but still), and what 8 new maps, 3 new game modes and many enhancements. All for the high price of 0$.

What we are seeing is games that are asking for anything from 1.99 for new LBP skins to 10$ Halo3 map packs with a WHOPPING three whole maps (I can assure you if a dev is fine making a complete game for 60$ then 3 maps for 10$ means someone is getting screwed with, either the dev is undercharging for the initial game or they are overpricing the DLC a ton).

I have played Counter-Strike 1.6 for almost a decade now since its early 1.5 days, it cost me 30$ back when it came out and I've loved every bit of it. The game has almost 250k unique players logging in each day to frag away with and has no less than 55k-75k people on at one time, 10 years+ after its initial inception. I have almost 3,000 maps running in my server map rotation and the amount of ingenious mods (Warcraft 3 to superhero to Kreedz climbing to gungame) have left the game with an almost unending replayability. All at the fine price of 0$ (yes because they are user mods but hey consoles don't offer user mods so I'll uses it anyway). We get cool updates such as battlefield 1942's large map packs and vehicle additions all at the fine price of 0$ and developers were doing just fine then.

If gamers buy even 10 titles a year and spend 15-20$ per title on extra DLC your looking at almost 200$ a year for additional content, stuff that historically came FREE with PC gaming. I know personally that I have never had to spend 200$ per year on PC hardware to keep my PC running games at top of the line sound and graphics.
Thus in the end I think we have just traded one "inconvenience" (I love PC building so it's not to me and I know many others love their custom rigs) for another; that of ridiculous DLC prices.

[EDIT] Grammatical corrections