Given on how abysmally current gen consoles perform and how great less expensive PC components like the 6th gen i3s are starting to get, it seems logical that a higher-price point console using better hardware would have a niche in the market. With a dedicated API and consistent hardware set to make optimisation easier, a sub £500 console capable of high fidelity gaming is something I would have seriously considered as an alternative to the PC I just built.
One thing that I find separates PC from console gaming is the lower-studio budget and indie game market, which plenty of people enjoy. Similarly the array of genres available for PC is much wider. This was a perk of the Playstation 2 - there was a huge array of titles from AAA quality down, allowing for greater innovation and library sizes. Working with smaller developers in this way and adding a stock keybard/mouse would go a long way to help this, as would encouraging developers to make PC ports, both old and new.
High-ish fidelity at 60fps/1920x1080 would be the other selling point, which with DX12 utilisation seems reasonable with mid-tier hardware. Would you put in it? What kind of controller(s) would you prefer? What kind of aesthetic would you choose?
>>51481187
steam machine :^)
controller
This would substantially outpeform a PS4/Xbox One, especially with a dedicated API and all the optimisation consistent hardware allows for. It's already more or less the same price which would only decrease with mass production and wholesale purchasing.
>>51481463
That was supposed to be an i3 6300 for what it's worth.
>>51481463
>more or less the same price
>costs 50% more than consoles
>make a free™ and upgradable console
>invent the pc
>make an actual console with soldered hardware and limited software
>Stallman frowns upon you
I'll make the logo
>>51481187
controller has a slide-out/removable touch-pad and keyboard (for web, chat, drawing, and more)
can use standard blue-tooth/usb keyboard and mouse as a controller
console is impossible to stack things on and has ether:
1 dvi-i, 2 thunderbolt, 6 usb ports (4 3.0)
2 hdmi (for high res), 1 thunderbolt, 8 usb ports (2 3.0)
1 display port, 1 thunderbolt, 8 usb ports (2 3.0)
small internal hdd for downloaded games
has a hot-swap bay and a disc drive
games ship on small encrypted ssd that has ~15GB extra (for patches and saves)
sell a program to unencrypt and play the games on a pc for ~$50 usd
open-source & make free after decent profit has been made.
>>51481224
Pretty much this. SteamOS is Debian but tweaked for gaming, so it's already my optimal choice of distribution.
>>51482000
It's been a failure though, worse framerates than PCs with the same hardware and the controller looks terrible when they should have had an ergonomic wireless keyboard/mouse as well as a controller.
>>51482027
>muh framerates
This is 100% Nvidia and AMD's fault for not writing better drivers, and AMD is working on that.
>>51481776
You, I like you.
I've been a pcfag permanently, never done consoles since the 64.
Do consoles ever have an updated version? I mean hardware. I know that the playstation will have slim versions, but does the capability remain the same?
if so, the problem is you're fucked in 6 year increments because they can't update it and just 4 - 8 months after the first console is out, there's gonna be a new cpu/gpu/etc that will make it a joke.
if not, the problem is you might as well just get a PC. I feel that consoles should have a middle of the road version in the sense of, 4 years into the "generation", release a new one, and just force the old ones to have a low graphics mode.
>>51481463
>more or less the same price
Dude, you can get a PS4 or Xbone for ~$300 including a bundle of games and sometimes a free controller on some of these black friday deals...
>>51481776
You could even ship games on sd cards and have a durable sd card reader.
I would go with:
i3 6300 tier CPU
r9 380 tier GPU
8GB DDR4 >2666mhz
Small SSD for OS etc
SD card reader for games
HDMI out
4 USB 3.1 ports
Xbox-esque controller and a wireless keyboard/touchpad system as standard with the option to use third party peripherals.
That would play almost any game on the market at around 60fps on high-ish settings in full HD and that's without a dedicated API or the optimisation you could do with consistent hardware.
>>51482232
They're black friday deals though. It's worth noting that the hardware price wouldn't be what you'd pay on newegg etc as you'd likely have custom hardware from the component companies supplied at or below wholesale cost. Even if there was no cooperation with the hardware companies the components could be had for wholesale cost at the very least.
You got me on the $500 thing but as I'm saying, it would cheaper than that anyway.
>>51481187
>High-ish fidelity at 60fps/1920x1080
No better than a normal console. Let's do this properly:
>144fps 1080p
>no framebuffer, Atari 2600 style
Let's see you sacrifice framerate for image quality now, assholes.
>>51482138
>and just force the old ones to have a low graphics mode
This would be a good idea.
>>51482307
>You could even ship games on sd cards
When the Playstation first showed up with the gigantic 700MB CDs and later Nintendo too, I never thought I'd see the day of games shipped in cards again. I always thought optical media would be one step ahead of solid state. Fast forward 20 years and the first "regression" back to cards happened with the PS Vita's launch.
A console thats actually a PC. What (Xbox) a (XboxOne) great (PS4) idea (Steam Machine).
>>51481187$ >
Intel CPUs are garbage when it comes to value.
Take 8 arm A72 cores or a custom ARM-v8 cpu, integrate them into the die of a GPU like the fury nano but on 16nm, or nvidia 2016 gpu. Give it 16gb of HBM2 and you're finished. With GPU CPU and RAM all on one die the motherboard will cost little to produce, it will still cost less than an system based on an intel i3 and mid range gpu.
With a lightweight linux install and vulkan it will outperform everything else. Give it a PCIe SSD and there should be no loading times or texture streaming issues.
>>51482401
And in case anybody gets any clever ideas about streaming from a framebuffer in main memory, or building their own frame buffer in VRAM:
>separate VRAM
>low bandwidth VRAM interface
>fixed function GPU
>>51482720
this, although i am not certain about the price
>>51482720
combine this with what >>51481776 said
have nearly half the software team work on wayland and other linux things the whole time.
>best console ever
>year of linux desktop
>>51482926
putting them all on one chip would be expensive up front
but it would get exponentially cheaper after a point
I'm more worried about the thermals.
could always do two chips on the first model and only one on the second
>consoles
Consoles are dead. If you want games on your TV, hook a goddamn computer up to the TV.
This isn't complicated, everyone. Why consoles are still around is a fucking mystery.
>>51482401
Current gen consoles DON'T do 60fps/1080p. Battlefront is 720p on the Xbox and 900p on the PS4.
>>51483052
The point is to make hardware such that it's literally impossible to show less than 144fps. If you ever let the framerate drop you won't just get stuttering, you'll get an unwatchable flickering mess. Race the beam like it's 1977.
>>51482720
>>51483006
>>51482926
How'd the performance be though?
Why are the current gen consoles so bad? Imagine how big the difference between PC and console is going to be in seven years because MS and Sony made such a bad call on the hardware this time.
>>51483076
That would be great but since consoles 2015-2020+ can't even do modern games at 1080p it wouldn't be affordable to insist on 144hz.
>>51483178
Deal with it. If devs are forced to hit 144fps minimum then that's what they're going to do. Reduce the detail as necessary.
>>51482926
>this, although i am not certain about the price
Should be pretty easy a fury sized gpu die is about 120-200 USD? ARM cores are very compact, they will only use maybe 10% of the die. The unknown is HBM2, I have heard that the memory chips are actually cheap and the costs are in manufacturing the interposer. 16gb of HBM2 may not be much more than 4gb HBM1. But I have never seen a proper breakdown of HBM costs.
Motherboard and other bits will be cheaper than a PS4 due to everything being on the primary SoC. I would think $500 - $599 USD would be possible for this design.
>>51483242
How'd the IPC be on the ARM cores?
>>51483149
>How'd the performance be though?
At a minimum 4x the power of the PS4. Might be a little more due to the PS4 issues such as PS4 memory bandwidth is lower in real applications as the CPU and GPU fighting over different busses. The PS4 also wastes most of its ram on the OS, it only has 5gb to share between the gpu and cpu for games.
>>51483296
I'm sold. Is this a very recent development?
>>51483264
Decent enough, probably minimum twice as fast as the CPU in the xbone and PS4. If you can afford to modify the CPU a little you can get close to ivy bridge. There's a few benchmarks with the nvidia TX1 dev kit, that is only 4 A57 cores at around 2ghz the generation before the A72. A72 and the latest custom cores are all well ahead in IPC and you could have 8 of them.
>>51483320
>I'm sold. Is this a very recent development?
The frustrating thing is I could easily have this built but semiconductor companies won't respond to any to questions from small businesses or individuals so I can't crowd fund it or anything. Even without arm cores on the GPU with that new nvidia NVlink thing it might still be possible to just have the ARM part on a separate package.
Is there such an animal as an xbox and/or ps4 emulator that could be dropped on a pc to run these games on a pc? Id be willing to shill out a franklin for an emulator if it meant i was able to run thru pc. They could even make money in having an adapter so you can utilize the ps4/seXbox controller on the pc... anyone care to curse this idea?
>>51482505
And honestly, these umd were shit, god bless these ISO loaders.
>>51483296
The soc arch allow to encrypt almost everything, use eFuse, w^x, and lock away any form of dma access, a console need to be locked to have game.
