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Picking up any hobby from scratch is going to have a learning curve. If you can deal with the teething issues then gaming is one of the easier hobbies to get into. If you can follow guides then it's pretty easy to get set up, and as a bonus if you aren't an asshole about things and follow instructions reasonably well then finding someone to help you with getting specific issues resolved is pretty easy.
Like with any hobby you can really get into the weeds as far as what's "easiest" because everyone is just going to recommend the setup that works for them and that may not work for you out of the box. You are going to need to put some legwork into figuring out the hardware no matter what you buy. PC gaming is by far the cheapest and most flexible, full stop. You don't need a new PC to play games either, there is this odd misconception that you need high end hardware for anything and... No... Just no. You can play anything up to the Xbox One/PS4 generation of games (including PC) on computers that were midrange in 2018.
Grab an old PC collecting dust in the corner somewhere, install Fedora or Mint on it, and just use steam to launch anything you want to play. Explore the built in software repositories, those games are completely free, run on anything, and are surprisingly good in a lot of cases. If you end up wanting to play more and feel held back by the computer then look into something better. If you feel like you aren't enjoying it and want to upgrade the hardware just to see if that's what will make it click then it probably won't.
If you are really sold on the idea of consoles then don't discount modding an older system like an Xbox 360 or PS3, once they are set up you can just pick a game and go.
At the end of the day just find a system that you already have or that you can get for an amount you wouldn't care about losing. You don't want to drop a grand on a computer or a console with a bunch of games and never use it. Try playing some of the good free stuff and see if it's worth investing into first.
https://consolemods.org/wiki/Main_Page is a good starting point if OP is interested in going in that direction.