I’m 31 and I only really started playing games around 4 years ago, apart from playing on bootleg NES consoles or C64 as a kid.

It is worth it if you have fun doing it, and you probably will!

If you don’t know where to start, you probably still haven’t figure out what genres you’d be into.

You might like Steam Deck, an affordable console-like handheld PC, because:

• It offers a wide variety of games from all generations, so if you want to experiment with different genres you can always find something for yourself - you can purchase a game on Steam store and if it’s not for you, just return it below 2h of gameplay
• Very user friendly, easy to navigate for non-techies, despite being PC, for the most part it just works, great entry for folks with no prior experience with PC gaming
• It’s a handheld! Take it with you anywhere easily, play in bed, on couch, toilet, whatever. If you’re used to playing on a phone, this might be appealing
• you can still dock it as a regular PC and have mouse+keyboard+external screen if you want to try gaming this way
• if you want to tinker to explore even further, you can emulate older consoles, play with 3rd party launchers, use it for other things than gaming, even replace the software completely - it is all possible

Other choices are perfectly valid like Nintendo Switch, Xbox or PS5, but they’re within their respective closed ecosystems. With Xbox and PS5 you’re also stuck with TV. Consoles have limited backwards compatibility, so for example Switch only supports games for Switch, PS5 supports games for PS5 and PS4, and it’s a bit better with Xbox iirc.

If you want Nintendo Switch (if games like Mario or Zelda are appealing to you), maybe wait a little bit as they’re cooking new generation for release soon-ish, and the current one is old and miserable in terms of performance.