Community Console, How would you do it?

[Noctua_Boy]

Lets say you had the power creating a console , how would you do it? Lets assume your company has to release this by 2020 and has to cost effective.

 

My Specs:

• Nvidia next gen GPU (Midrange) - they have the upper hand in GPU tech.
• Free Online 
• Ability to connect External GPU's to improve graphics
• Hybrid Hard Drives (Nand built in to improve performance)
• Cross Platform online on all games (Up to the developer)

[dizmo]

So how do you plan to make money at this?

The companies that produce consoles don't make any money from the console itself. They make money from the monthly fee. With free online, you're basically eliminating the revenue source, and the whole idea becomes rather pointless.

[Eduard the weeb]

fyi price kinda fucked because current gpu pricing 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dDtTHh

[vanished]

Regardless of whatever else it is and can do, I would give people the option to run a desktop OS of their choice on it in a way that it has access to everything (files, hardware, etc.) on the device.  I could not ethically offer a device without this feature to someone without first very clearly explaining my misgivings about doing so.

[KarathKasun]

AMD GPU, you can leverage AMDs need for market share to get lower prices.

 

This is what Nintendo did with NV for the Switch.  NV wanted the mobile market share so they probably cut them a sweet deal.

[Noctua_Boy]

27 minutes ago, dizmo said:

So how do you plan to make money at this?

The companies that produce consoles don't make any money from the console itself. They make money from the monthly fee. With free online, you're basically eliminating the revenue source, and the whole idea becomes rather pointless.

Licensing fees from games. The Online Service on PS3 and Wii was free.

[Noctua_Boy]

22 minutes ago, Eduard the weeb said:

fyi price kinda fucked because current gpu pricing 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dDtTHh

Companies dont buy Bulk GPU units at the same price the public does.

[KarathKasun]

2 minutes ago, Noctua_Boy said:

Licensing fees from games. The Online Service on PS3 and Wii was free.

PS4 wasnt free because hardware was not expected to make enough profit to cover R&D.

 

PS3 was free because they had to get market share somehow.

 

Wii had near zero R&D costs to cover while still selling the hardware for a good profit.

[Noctua_Boy]

23 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Regardless of whatever else it is and can do, I would give people the option to run a desktop OS of their choice on it in a way that it has access to everything (files, hardware, etc.) on the device.  I could not ethically offer a device without this feature to someone without first very clearly explaining my misgivings about doing so.

The PS2 and PS3 had the option of running Linus thus operating has as a PC. Would be great for people on a limited gadget budget.

[vanished]

1 minute ago, Noctua_Boy said:

The PS2 and PS3 had the option of running Linus thus operating has as a PC. Would be great for people on a limited gadget budget.

I never heard of the PS2 doing that, interesting.  As for the PS3, they locked it down shortly after launched (in fact there's a thread about the lawsuit over that here somewhere...)

[Noctua_Boy]

1 minute ago, KarathKasun said:

PS4 wasnt free because hardware was not expected to make enough profit to cover R&D.

 

PS3 was free because they had to get market share somehow.

 

Wii had near zero R&D costs to cover.

Why do you think i said License fees from games?

[Noctua_Boy]

Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

I never heard of the PS2 doing that, interesting.  As for the PS3, they locked it down shortly after launched (in fact there's a thread about the lawsuit over that here somewhere...)

Yh i lived trough all that. Good old Yellow Dog Linux.

 

[KarathKasun]

4 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I never heard of the PS2 doing that, interesting.  As for the PS3, they locked it down shortly after launched (in fact there's a thread about the lawsuit over that here somewhere...)

PS3 had Linux for 4+ years, it wasn't removed shortly after launch.

[vanished]

Just now, KarathKasun said:

PS3 had Linux for 4+ years, it wasn't removed shortly after launch.

oh, I thought it was sooner than that... I guess it has been a while, hard to remember and all

[dizmo]

12 minutes ago, Noctua_Boy said:

Licensing fees from games. The Online Service on PS3 and Wii was free.

There are many problems with that. For starters, the PS3 didn't turn a profit for years because of that business model. As an entity that isn't as massive as Sony, you simply wouldn't be able to sustain that kind of loss year over year. Not only that, but you're going to make very little money to start with from licenses. So that's not sustainable either.

 

[Noctua_Boy]

1 minute ago, dizmo said:

There are many problems with that. For starters, the PS3 didn't turn a profit for years because of that business model. As an entity that isn't as massive as Sony, you simply wouldn't be able to sustain that kind of loss year over year. Not only that, but you're going to make very little money to start with from licenses. So that's not sustainable either.

 

The PS3 was being sold at a (high) loss , the free online wasn't the culprit. If you outsource servers  to Amazon , Google or Microsoft the maintenance cost is even lower. Like i explain , it was sustainable on the Wii Platform , If you make a console with off the shelf parts/architecture , your R&D are not that big anyway. You would most likely spend more money on Advertising than the hardware/software R&D itself.

 

[Noctua_Boy]

16 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

oh, I thought it was sooner than that... I guess it has been a while, hard to remember and all

What would you call it? GAME STATION? GABE STATION? Super Power Duper 3000? Terminator 9000?

[vanished]

Just now, Noctua_Boy said:

What would you call it? GAME STATION? GABE STATION? Super Power Duper 3000? Terminator 9000?

Hm... that is a good question.  I'd try to incorporate the concept of "freedom" and giving control to the user in some way, since that's the cornerstone of my suggestion. 

[Noctua_Boy]

Intel QUADCORE I3 (Great IPC) 

NVIDIA "AMPERE" MIDRANGE GPU 

16GB GDDR5

1TB Hard Drive

 

 

[W-L]

Please keep posts related to the topic at hand. 

 

-Thread Cleaned- 

[Noctua_Boy]

14 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Hm... that is a good question.  I'd try to incorporate the concept of "freedom" and giving control to the user in some way, since that's the cornerstone of my suggestion. 

 

[SteveGrabowski0]

It would render at 8k 120fps and also be portable with 16 hours battery life at max screen brightness. Also the screen would be FreeSync OLED 10-bit HDR and could be scaled from 6 inches (handheld mode) to 80 inches (wall mount mode). It would cost $99.95 and play all Playstation and Nintendo games as well as support Steam and GOG and would come with a copy of Star Citizen plus a Windows license.

[SteveGrabowski0]

 

11 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

oh, I thought it was sooner than that... I guess it has been a while, hard to remember and all

The US Air Force made a something like 1000 PS3 cluster computer that got made obsolete by a system update. 

[dizmo]

40 minutes ago, Noctua_Boy said:

The PS3 was being sold at a (high) loss , the free online wasn't the culprit. If you outsource servers  to Amazon , Google or Microsoft the maintenance cost is even lower. Like i explain , it was sustainable on the Wii Platform , If you make a console with off the shelf parts/architecture , your R&D are not that big anyway. You would most likely spend more money on Advertising than the hardware/software R&D itself.

That still doesn't solve the fact that people are unlikely to go to an unproven platform to sell their games.

You'd still have R&D costs, as you can't just slap together a PC in a different enclosure and have it sell. Otherwise everyone would do that.

If you're using off the shelf parts, your costs aren't as low as you think. You won't get as good of a deal from Nvidia for mass buying GPUs, as their BOM is significantly higher on a complete card than a simple GPU core.

 

Not only that, but how are you going to collect licensing money if you're simply going to be building what's basically a computer in a custom case?

 

It's just not logical.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Consoles are not about the hardware. That's just a marketing point. It's about the user experience. If the system isn't Apple levels of user experience (Okay, maybe not quite that level), it can't be called a console. It'll just be another desktop PC.