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I mostly agree with you, though hacking systems can be fun.

This is all the more reason to do PC gaming these days; all a console gets you is sub-par hardware locked down tighter than Fort Knox, and no Steam sales.

Of course, co-op/multiplayer same-room gaming is always fun on consoles, but the number and type of games that support this is becoming limited since publishers apparently think it is more lucrative to sell network-only co-op games so that everyone has to buy a copy.

Gaming hardware is more or less general purpose these days for the simple fact that it makes them more appealing to more people, most don't want a half dozen single use devices that they have to find a way to connect to a TV that only has 2-3 inputs, they don't want another device drawing more power, putting out more heat and having more LED lights that always seem to be pointed directly into your retina when you are trying to watch a watching a movie in a dark room.

And the console companies know this, they are moving more and more toward making the console what it is, a dedicated HTPC, in the next gen or 2 we will likely see them add a cable card so they can have full DVR capability.

The only problem with game consoles from the big companies is that they are designed to be walled garden devices.

It's why I've been wondering for some time now why a company like AMD hasn't whipped up a game console, they halve all the necessary tech to make a very good one. All they'd need to do is hire someone to mod up a BSD for them so they can still allow for a more or less open platform to upstart developers from the PC gaming world, but still be able to appease the media companies and the console game companies that think DRM does anything.

Since the hardware would be more or less standard off the shelf x86 hardware each year they could slash production costs via die shrinks while keeping the same level of performance over the console's 5 year generational lifespan.

Without being a walled garden, consoles would possibly lose a large part of reasons why people get them (particularly now that they are networked). A successful console is much more than good tech (Dreamcast was quite good tech-wise, but...)

An open platform console would probably end up much more expensive up-front than competition, the model of subsidizing hardware being less viable on it. Hence hardly anybody would buy it, hence no support of big games, and/or more traditional makers would do some sweet deals with publishers. So we'd probably end up with effects reminiscent of those leading to 1983 video game crash, but limited to that one console (Atari 2600 was also quite open, as far as publishing games went; the idea of closed systems is what revitalised the landscape...)

BTW, present consoles also slash production costs by die shrinks (generally, revisions - die shrinks don't come as often as you paint it, every year), and generations now last (and likely will continue to last) longer than 5 years.

Very true, it was your idiot brother that yanked on the disk to get it out till he damaged the spindle that damaged the PSOne drives, if you taped down the disc it would still read fine though, my Dualshock edition PSOne still works fine today after more then a decade of use.

I agree with you 101%, I love game-only consoles and I don't care about playing videos in a console at all.

But, What We think is not always representative of what the market or the common people think.

History tell us that DVD playback was a very strong reason to buy a PS2 (same with Blu-Ray/PS3).

That's why I suspect that XBMC could be a killer app for Ouya.