Reading the actual data sheet from IBM on the Model 5150, IBMs first home PC in 1981, it shows only the keyboard being sold. The rest of you had listed are add-ons. I remember that joystick since it was the same one shipped with the Atari 2600. It was an 8 Way Single Button controller.
Right, the 5150 itself didn't came with a joystick by IBM themselves but later models like PCjr released in 1984 had joysticks - however even the original 5150 had expansion cards for joystick support and as of IBM AT (1984) the BIOS provided functionality for easier access.
The first two generations of computers only had keyboards.
Yes, but from the beginning the IBM PC was made to be extensible and IBM even provided their own
game control adapter, in fact...
Atari designed their 8 Way 1 Button joystick for the 2600 using the standard D-Sub 9 pin connector. Other companies copied the design and sold it under their own name brand.
...the so-called "PC game port" that persisted even during the 90s until USB replaced wasn't the common 9-pin dsub connector found in Atari but instead the 15-pin dsub connector found in IBM's control card.
PC Gaming was going strong in the 1980s as there were plenty of games available to play.
Sure, never claimed otherwise, i do not see the point of bringing that up.
It seems that you are completely ignorant of things as you weren't alive then.
Being alive at a period of history is unnecessary to know it, i have been interested in computing history and reading about it for decades now.
I was and had one of the earliest computers sold which was the Atari 800 XL with 5.25" floppy drive. I had thousands of games on my PC ranging from QBert to Karateka and that was in 1984.
Sure, i also had a PC XT clone in 1991 with several PC games, but i'm not sure what is the point of mentioning this. Your Atari 800 XL was also able to use controllers too - as was the Apple II released in 1977. So if anything you should know that controllers was a thing on PCs and home computers since pretty much the beginning.
My suggestion is for you to stick to what you know and let those of us that were alive speak about things you don't know about.
I do stick with what i know indeed, but you being alive back then doesn't make you automatically knowledgeable of what was going on.
And regardless the point of my post was that controllers existed in home computers and PCs from the beginning and not something that came out much later, so associating PCs with "keyboard and mouse" (which is actually something the vast majority of computers didn't even have until Windows started dominating the OS space - hence why Windows was always way more keyboard friendly than the Mac because the latter came with a mouse whereas the former had to work in PCs without one) and consoles with "controllers" is ignorant at best when not only home computers/PCs had controllers from the very beginning, but they always had by far the richest selection of controllers even taking all other gaming platforms combined.
The essence of the problem is that it's a handheld device meant to be used on your couch, without a mouse and keyboard on hand, thus reducing pointer precision and dramatically restricting your range of inputs.
PC gaming nowadays is more than just a desktop though - you could already connect your PC to a big TV for couch gaming, either directly via an HDMI cable or using something like Steam Link, so being able to use a controller that is convenient for such a use is a positive thing. In addition in recent years you are able to play PC gaming in handheld form factors too, be it via steaming (Nvidia provided this for some time now) to a mobile phone (and an associated bluetooth controller that can be wrapped around the phone) or via dedicated gaming hardware like GPD Win or now the Steam Deck (which has its own controller interface that expands on the limitations that XBox/PS4-derived controllers have).
I would love to, for instance, have a little multi-button joystick built into the side of my keyboard - analog movement, mouse pointing, and all the shortcuts I could desire - but that's not how it's done.
This is something that i also wanted for some time but i think the main issue would be that games need to support at least seamless controller and mouse use and few games do that nowadays. Perhaps it could be made to work with Steam's input API.
But there needs to be some demand for it and with the way people associate "PC=KBM" it is sometimes hard to convince people that the digital WASD is actually inferior to a real analog input for precise input, despite being perfectly capable of understanding that having direct control over the camera's orientation with an analog device (their mouse) is superior to having indirect control over the it by adjusting its speed (the right control stick with most gamepads).
And IMO people who make such associations make it harder to have devices like the one you and i would like to see.
