As all the games machines become more sophisticated and become more recognisable as computers (esp the Xbox...) It seems that this whole console thing is getting pretty lame. why bother having different machines that can only play their own games? I would expect that games machines will eventually become pretty generic, and you'll end up in a similar siutation to buying a PC, being able to buy cheap crap or posh fast stuff to play games written to a standard format. Seems like a good idea to me.

BUT then of course why stop there... surely they should actually BE PC's? They can be made to look like flashy small boxes under your tv, but still can actually be x86 machines or something under the hood. The main problem with this though is currently the time it takes to load a game, and inside Windows at that. Recently I dl'ed the UT2K3 gentoo live cd and gave it a whirl, and it went really well. Maybe this would be a good idea for a proper system? you should be able to build a specialised distrobution including some form of X in a 100mb or so, which should easily fit on any other game cd. You'd need to create some sort of standard for compliant hardware (i.e. "look for the * logo on your graphics card!") In order to make the whole thing utterly bombproof... This system should be as reliable as a games console. The only other thing. And also soem sort of storage would be needed to save system settings, as well as game saves etc... Inside an existing partition as a regular file maybe, or maybe an external usb drive...

hmm, just something i'ev been thinking about in my daily 3.4s of boredom.

Well, i never saw a point of consoles, as a matter of fact i never owned one, although i played the really addictive GTA3 on my friends PS2. My opinion is that PCs can do all that a console can, plus much, much more, so i never saw a point in buying a console if a PC is quite enough.
-NSKL

A big reason consoles are popular with programmers is that they know
exactly what they will be dealing with hardware and software wise. On a
PC, you may have to write to a lower standard than you would like so you
can sell the game.
However, it should be possible to set up a distribution that has (or can get)
the latest hardware drivers (specifically, video and audio), and just figures
out which one to install depending on the information returned from the
BIOS. I've been thinking about this for a while, though so far it's just been
a thought experiment.
Most of the infrastructure is available to Linux to set up a game disk that
boots right into the game. The hardest part is finding a good game to test
this on. I think the UT2003 game would be a good test, since it has some
pretty harsh requirements for video hardware. I don't have the hardware
to try out the gentoo CD. . . =-{

i am a strong linux enthusiast, and have recently become the ecstatic owner of an xbox. i have to agree with moses, in that it's much easier to write a game for a platform where the exact specifications and capabilities of the hardware are known with total certainty, than to write for the PC, whose hardware varies tremendously. the other thing is that as far as the end user is concerned, it's much easier to not have to worry about system requirements, because any xbox game will run on any xbox.

your theory of the boot disc with the game is probably the best solution to this whole problem that i've heard so far, but you still have to deal with the dreaded SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS, simply because pcs continue to evolve, and pc developers want to take advantage of the latest hardware. eventually the older games still would have trouble with new hardware, and the same problem would occur as with an older console.

the concept of one simple standard for writing the games is also a good one, but it's just not going to happen. The point of different consoles is to build customer loyalty to that platform's manufacturer.

personally, i've decided that games should be left to the simplicity of consoles for the most part, and only the cutting edge games need to be on the computer. I use my computer and wonderful linux for school and internet mainly, and usually leave games to my new xbox. i have nothing against games on computers, it's just simpler for most people to deal with consoles.

Well I gotta agree with moses, look when you buy a PC game there is a minimum requirements chart on the side, what if I am so lazy and budget tight that I have only 850MHz system and a crapy video card and the game requires at least Pentium 1GHz and for a smoother graphics performance it needs GeForce3 500 Ti and I'll have to go to upgrade my PC to run the damn thing I want so badly??? The consoles eliminate all the minimum requirements crap, if it is said it designed for PlayStation2 it will only be playable on PlayStation2, and now we have most titles for all three/four consoles - XBox, PSX, PS2, and GameCube - and PC's, so this brings another issue - what is the point booting to windows to play games if you can play them on a gaming console, I hear a lot people posting they keep a dual boot system solely for being able play Windows games, so I assume they don't have an extra 200 bucks for a gaming console, or they think there are no warez for game consoles and if there are any it is impossible to play a burnt copy, it is all possible, and mostly illegal anyway but the let's leave the copyrights and intellectual property discussion for another thread.

I certainly think that compatability would be feasible. Just introduce a rating system that any piece of hardware has to conform to. Being pretty strict and abstracting the whole thing you can simply have a level 1 graphics card or cpu, and maybe after 2 years, just like psone/ps2 you can move up to a new standard with a different colour flashy sticker on the box.

I'd imagine most systems being bought ready built (well.. as most are anyway...) so everything just gets reduced to one single badge on the front of the box.

Also though that would be a potential benefit of a system like this, system requirements. with a highly specialized system, you wouldn't need as much cpu power anyway (ps2 is only 350mhz...) so faster games should be able to run here than in windows anyway.

as moses says you need to know what you are dealing with, which is where rating helps again, although it's easier to develope for a single GPU, developing for a highly restricted list of say 5 different chipset with a minimum ram etc... that have been highly tested to be recognised properly. These cards would probably cost more from being able to promote themselves as compatabile with this system....

i think it's got wings...

For the most part I agree with you Acid, it might come down to the fact that there would be three/four competing companies on the PC market building pre-configured PC boxes (no flexibility), but
ps2 is 350MHz of 128-bit processing power with RISC architecture in the heart, so we are comparing apple and oranges, the games for PS2 are specifically designed for Sony's Emotion Engine, which is a Sparc processor on ludes, on the other hand XBox is built around intel architecture and there is no major modification to the game code must be done for developers to port it from PC to XBox, that's why almost any popular title for PC's is available for XBox, and there is why there are no titles for XBox that is only available for the older PlayStation One, and original titles for PlayStation2, and vise versa, there are some titles that are only available for XBox, but anyway linux runs on both consoles with little or no modifications to the hardware internals (Sony ships linux kit and XBox should be chip-moded to unlock the internal HDD)

AMD chips are so freakin' cheap right now. . .
I don't think it would be that difficult to set up a rating system that
one could point to and say, "this game will run on that with no
problems."
What is difficult is that there are so many Linux distros out there,
and most of the big name ones change version numbers so
frequently that the developers can't keep up. There don't
*appear* to be any standards, so there isn't much incentive to
build a linux game because if you build it for RH 8.0, you don't
know if it'll run on MDK 8.0, or RH 7.2, Yopper 1.0.
A few years ago, Slackware went from 4.0 to 7.0 with nothing
in between. The reason was version inflation by other
distributors, and Patrick getting calls asking if they had "linux
8.0". We get the same problem with game developers not
knowing whether they're efforts will pay off because they don't
know how many people actually use something that will work.
Another issue I've noticed is that many driver developers seem
to think they need to build a module for each minor release of
the kernel. Sometimes this may even be true, which is really
a pain in the . . .
It would be nice to have/build a distro that is centered around
playing games, one that defined some standards for hardware,
some standards for the games, and some standards for the
other software installed. If game developers could look at the
standards and know, "this game will run on any machine that
meets these standards", we would be moving in the right
direction. . .

Well peeps, good points. All of them. But before any 1 system will do that, it's just like what was stated above:

Consoles are basically rock solid because of the access to arch. and it never changes.

Hence, this conversation prolly wouldn't have happened if the world was trully source free! ... err.. maybe.

L8rz

They are not rock solid, i saw both Xbox and ps2 to freeze in the middle of the game. The only console i own however is nintendo entertainment system (NES) even older then super nintendo, and requires those big plastic boxes they call catridges to run, but it never froze at least, i guess cuz the best game it can run is super mario.
Anyway, off topic.. sorry im just proud to have a NES
-NSKL

ALL consoles have frozen at one point or another. But mainly its due to poor heat control or data errz.

My point wasn't about the solidity of the console... but rather the concept behind it.
Get it?

Kewl.

L8rz

hm. so let's build this machine kewp suggested right at the start of this thread?

Already working on something similar...
If anyone wants to help, by all means raise a hand... err... do penguins have hands?

Guess not... but the SuSE lizard does!

L8rz

what kind of help do u need?

Well,

I guess I'll have to layout some kinda productive timeline eh?
Or... guess I could point you to a site I have that could show the possiblilities and projects that are current.

I'll see what I can throw together. Being a 1 man team... you don't get much time to be neat with paperwork.

L8rz