To play Quake or Counter-Strike competently, you have to use a PC, a keyboard, and, crucially, a mouse. A console controller can't hope to compete. And a ton of players play on consoles from a sofa, before a large TV. To capture this audience, the FPS games had to slooow doooown.
CounterStrike (back when it was an HL mod) was the last game I really got good at. And by good I mean "somewhat competitive people didn't hate having me on their team" not "I was the MVP." I sunk a lot of time into doing so.
