From the makers of CD32, The AmigaCD64.... Possible?

[BigBenAussie]

Ok. I'll say it yet again.

Eyetech should be licensing the hardware of an established console manufacturer like MS, Sony or Nintendo.

They should then increase the specs to make it a state of the art console that can be used as a computer. A premium brand, with more memory, HD, DVD burner and a faster processor and Digital Video Recording functionality like TiVo. It would boot into OS4 if a DVD was not placed in the tray. You could run all the games on that established console on the Amiga hardware based on the console and all those games would hit the hardware like the Amiga days of old. I believe the best selling Amiga, the A500, was conceptually a console that could be used as a computer, and I think that such an endeavour would be going back to roots. Go the whole way with the distinctive Amiga Fantasy concept or even something like an A1000 and you are sure to have a winner.

MS, for instance, in an attempt to swamp the market before PS3, is licensing its XBOX2 technology to other manufacturers. You'll soon have a Panasonic or Phillips brand console. So why not an Amiga console? The next gen consoles will be kick ass, with possibly three G5 processors, HDTv display and Sony's will have cell technology as well. The games standards for the latest consoles are becoming ubiquitous and basing a next gen Amiga on such hardware would mean that an Amiga port would not be required and we would be able to run all the games of the base console.

Sony released a Linux add on to the PS2 with keyboard and HD, which I nearly bought as I thought it would be cool to write a game based on the same hardware. So many of my geek friends nearly went that route as well. Perhaps Sony can be convinced to allow AmigaOS to be the OS of choice for such an environment. Many universities around the world are now teaching games programming and an Amiga console could be the programming environment of choice.

Imagine OS4 running on next gen console hardware. It might not be possible for official Amiga games to be produced, and that may never ever happen again anyway, but it could serve as an excellent homebrew game programming environment. Another advantage to an OS4 port to console hardware would be that it wouldn't have to support every graphics card under the sun and drivers would be standard. As OS4 has a Hardware Abstraction Layer, moving to a future console's hardware should be a smaller issue than 68k to PPC.

[BigBenAussie]

And what exactly would you be suggesting Eyetech do?

That Discover console leverages PC games, so apart from the specs being way lower than the next gen consoles, they can leverage the XNA initiative. What games would there be for an Amiga console, and how competitive could it be? The A1 specs are lower and there is no software to leverage except classic stuff(which I've seen running on an XBox anyway). Not good. :-(

If only Sony or even Nintendo would do the same as XNA by establishing a development standard, and that the next gen Amiga could be compatable with them. They would need to be OpenGL based, of course, instead of having their own proprietry Graphics architecture. I somehow think that the cell architecture thingy, rules Sony out by the way, unless a next gen Amiga features such hardware as well.

And even if they created such a development standard, Amiga doesn't even rate as a blip for inclusion in the standard. Its more likely to go to Linux, and Redhat has more money to make it happen than all the Amiga companies combined.

No, IMHO, the only way to compete is to license console hardware and get OS4 sitting on top. We have to face facts, that the Amiga market will never be able to generate anything near the cutting edge games as the dominant platforms. The games written on OS4 sitting on the console probably wouldn't be hardware hitters, and therefore no threat to Sony's own games. However it would be cool, if such software could be made to run on all the Sony hardware for instance, and maybe sold at bargain basement prices or as compilations. Perhaps multimedia functionaly could be written on OS4.