...I don't know how much you pay for PICs, but here in Brazil an atmega32 (32KB Flash, 2KB RAM, 16MIPS) costs about the same of an pic16f887 (8K words, 368 bytes RAM, 5MIPS).
One thing that I like from Microchip is that they offer dip packages for a lot of their microcontrollers.
For hobby use, the cost of the micro itself is of virtually no concern. If you are going to produce 100 or 1000000 of something, then it matters. But for hobby use, you need cheap, accessible, and easy to use tools to get the project going and done. For PIC, the MPLABX IDE is free and the C compilers are free too (with limitations on the free version). MPLABX comes with a simulator for all PIC micros. The PICkit3 can program
and debug every PIC in production, and most PICs that have ever been produced. I love the simulator. I usually test blocks of code in the simulator as I write them, so that by the time I put it all together, it usually just works. I have a PICkit3 and have never used the in-circuit debug for that reason; by the time I program a device, the code works. The PICkit3 is not expensive, but is still several times the price of the micros themselves. You can get AVR programmers for much less, but they are just programmers, not debuggers. An AVR programmer/debugger is comparable in cost to PICkit3. If you need really cheap tools, you can get a PICkit2 clone for $10 to $15 that will program and debug most PICs that take 2.5 to 5 V, but not the newest low voltage ones.