that whole article was all rhetoric. how do i know that wasnt written by people from ms, sony, or nintendo (the soc used is several times more powerful than wii)? it sure as hell sounds like it. but heres the thing, the games industry, as it stands, has stagnated greatly. tripple as turn out the same thing over and over and seldom do anything different. console games cost upwards of $60+, and many titles are exclusive. pc games are just too eager to fall into ms's clutches to get that dreaded games for windows sticker (and forcing us to use 360 gamepads over pc joysticks!), and seldom produce anything creative or original, nobody but indie developers can do that. im not going to touch mobile gaming because thats just not something i do.
now this console is something i would buy. i am not a console gamer, the reason being is consoles block you off from the possibility of doing anything other than playing games. you cant mod, you cant dev, if i owned one, it would just sit there collecting dust. here we have a hack box, you get it, can **** with the hardware, upgrade it add stuff to it plug your hotas into it and play the theoretical arm port of the scp. and all those indie devs out there, doing original and new game ideas, will be able to port their games to it. frankly if this is all it does it will still be better than the likes of sony, ms, and nintendo (to a lesser degree, nintendo dont really have a reputation for being total dicks like the former). thats not even mentioning that the concept is friendly to the valve way of doing things. the tripple a studios are riding on a sinking ship. i say let it sink.
should point out a few things in particular i didnt like about that article. first of all in dissected the kick starter video as if it were a historical documentary. it was not, it was an advertisement to investors. its main job is to get people excited about the console to get more money for the dev costs. there was a whole paragraph ranting about their mockup techniques. which to be fair its part of the process using a wood shop might not have the finesse of the megacorprate way of using multimillion dollar equipment in the prototyping phase. but its still an effective way to produce negative molds for injection molding. it then procedes to constantly overstate the impact of piracy. complete with a mock interview with the head of ea. it rants a lot about how unrealistic the draw of tripple a studios will be. **** EA! AND **** THE OTHER AAA STUDIOS! they are part of the old infrastructure. i dont even buy ea products anymore because of the draconian drm they tend to use, not to mention all their games are franchise rehashes. i have no doubt that the guy who wrote this is a mw3 fanboi, thinks halo is the best thing since sliced bread, and really loves what ms has done to pc gaming.
i cant even finis the article, its just horrible. even if the console flops id still buy one so i could mod the living **** out of it.
my only concern is their use of a standard off the shelf os. one of the benefits of consoles is that you can code in bare metal if you need to and tell the os to go **** itself. im not sure if their choice of android is appropriate for this kind of thing. of course i never used it and it may turn out to be a good thing.
tldr: naysayers will say nay. bare metal ftw!