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

[CaptainHIT]

What a great idea!!! :-D

There should be really a games-console from Amiga with name Amiga in it! ;-)

That would let the name be famous again, so people would say: Hey, isn't that new Amiga console the one i knew 15 years ago? Maybe it has same quality games! I better should go and buy one for test! :-)

That's what i would say when something like an Amiga branded console would come out.

And then it would rock when there are some oldies included in the pack. Games like Turrican Trilogy or Shadow Of The Beast Trilogy, the old best 2D classics, even maybe just emulated, or better, rewritten for native use.

Then there should be no real OS, a games console doesn't need an OS, but still there should be an option to upgrade to an OS with HDD etc :-)

Btw, speaking of OS, there should be a simple interface to fully access DVD's, VCD's, SVCD's, CDDA's and even handle to play mp3's and DivX! I hated Sony for integrating DVD-Player option for PS2 but leaving out VCD/SVCD! That sucked.

So, i guess an "Amiga Eleven" console would rock! Why Amiga Eleven? Hmm, because Eleven means "Elf" in german, and when i checked (hexread) the PPC executables (also the PS2 executables have this), the first 4 bytes are ".ELF". So i thought something like that would be cool. And sounds also nice, or not? :-)
Btw, why leaving a single PPC processor on the board? Isn't there enough room for 2 PPC's? ;-)

[CaptainHIT]

Amiga Eleven would be some advertising for the Computer/OS also. People would think: Hey, AmigaEleven is great! What about the AmigaOne? Maybe same quality and good software? Good games on it too? :-)

Speaking about games, porting games from AmigaEleven to AmigaOne would be easier then ;-)

Yummy, even the thought about this makes me dizzy, seeing quality Konami/Capcom/Sega games ported (no lame conversions from bad developers anymore!!!!) to AmigaOne! Ooooh ;-)

[CaptainHIT]

A bit off-topic, but i had to say that too now:
I also think that bad conversions participated for the death of amiga. After seeing games in the arcades, then buying the Amiga versions was always a dissappointment for me. Sure there are good conversions, but 70% of them suck. The consoles (SuperNES/SegaMegaDrive) had always the better conversions. That's why people went to consoles instead of using Amiga. My best example? Just try to remember Super Street Fighter II Turbo from the arcades, and then look at the Amiga conversion! :-(
SuperNES/MegaDrive versions were much much better, even gfx were not that close like in the Amiga version, but playability was better in them. :-(

[jamesm]

StevenJGore wrote:
Treating this purely as a 'fantasy' Amiga games console that has no chance of ever happening...

I'd go with:

CPU: 2Ghz PPC

Eh, pure fantasy, make the CPUs Dual AthlonFXs

BUS: 32-bit custom architecture (nothing really to be gained from being 64-bit)
GFX: 32-bit custom 3D graphics chip (if it were to use an existing solution like ATI or NVidia, then there would be nothing 'special' about it, people would just stick to their PC's)

Xbox uses a nvidia chip, just do the same. As long as the games are good.

RAM: 1GB RAM
OS: None, it's a games console!
Ports: USB 2.0

USB2.0 and Firewire, along with a Xbox/PS2 game controller interface

CDROM: DVD 16x

DVD+RW

CASE: Sleek, compact, brushed-aluminium.

...and a name like 'Amiga CD64' is too geeky in this day and age. Something like the 'Amiga Vision' or 'Amiga Future' games console would sound much better, especially from a marketing point of view!

Drop the Amiga name completely.. call it something like "GameBox" or something..

And sell the hardware for $49.95, bundle it with five games.. ahh, dreams

[patrik]

Is it only me or does it feel like this would be a very very expensive game console?


/Patrik

[Karlos]

patrik wrote:
Is it only me or does it feel like this would be a very very expensive game console?
/Patrik

No kidding.

[kvasarnomad]

80 Gig HD  upgradable and standard using and IDE port

No S-ATA would be more practical

[gizz72]

Greetings,
  Given 'an average joe's peecee'parts and expandability, which however some game console lacks, i don't see it becoming expensive. IMHO the more the demands there is a better chance of it getting cheap.
  Best example of expandability is the CD32-SX1. It expands from game console into one complete computer. Options in expandability is the key. Unless otherwise.
  How about this name 'UAES: Universal Amiga Entertainment System!' 8-)
Sounds cool. What do you think?


Keep those 'IDEAS' comming! Good day to all Amigans! :-D

[rod_stewRt]

how about just taking old hardware, speeding it up a little, adding loads of hardware, piling on memory... hmmm, well i guess it did work for pcs..

i reckon a completely new computer should be made, with the technology we have now and knowing exactly what we want from computers these days we could make an amazing computer!! instead of thinking polygons we should be thinking of lightpoints, collison, physics engines all available in a cisc/risc kinda way.. superfast memory and raid harddrives out of the box. wireless ethernet all that stuff..

and hey! how about sneaking them into those nice plasma gas tvs that cost a few grand!

serious thinking times..

---
we can make what we want, so let us make what we want!

[Sparky]

kvasarnomad wrote:

80 Gig HD  upgradable and standard using and IDE port

No S-ATA would be more practical

I must ask this, I tried to resist! ... Why is SATA more practical ?

[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.

[Hammer]

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

Note that; Microsoft will approach this via XNA initiative (bring in both Media PC(1) and XBOX2 clone armies against Sony's PS3).

Well, IF MS has Direct3D API based console, one could go for an OpenGL API based console.

Reference
1. http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/05/12/news_6097975.html

Sony .

Some person in moobunny quoted Cell’s FLOPS to around 32 GFLOP, while I quote NVIDIA’s VLSI Architect that the Geforce 256(NV10) has GFLOP’s to be ~50.

[gizz72]

Just googled discovered games console.
Check this baby out here.
Eyetech must not let go of this opportunity while
this Idea is still fresh.


Check
here again. Talk about irony. It had to be a PeeCee! Maybe it's not yet too late for the Amiga.

[Insanity]

Perhaps someone should mail Eyetech or something.

(Where is Kronos when you need someone standing with both his feet firmly on the ground? :-))  

[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.

[Hammer]

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.

Just for a point of reference in relation to NVIDIA's Geforce2's 50 GigaFLOP point score(2). The quote was from Joe Greco, director of VLSI engineering at NVIDIA Corporation.

There's no doubt that NVIDIA's NV4x and ATI's R4x0 will exceed that point score. One may see that ATI's VPU solution for XNA camp would have enough firepower to compete with Sony's Cell(seems to be scaled SIMDs for VPU/DSP work i.e. (Refer to MS/UT2004(Epic)/TombRaider(Core)’s 3D card "emulators" for the concept). Couple this that both ATI and NVIDIA have tiling related patents(3).

One can also see why, Longhorn(Aero Glass) and XNA's move to harness GPU/VPU's power for everyday applications is important.

Refer to
1. http://flyingmice.com/cgi-bin/squidcgi/mbmessage.pl/amiga/103094.shtml
2. http://tech-report.com/onearticle.x/208
3. http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/videologic/vivid/index1.php

Recall, the MPU clustering project that software emulates OpenGL for Quake3 in relation to power of today's GPU/VPU.

Note that,"DISCover console" will evolve in tandem with desktop counterpart since "DISCover console" is just Windows XP Media Centre or Windows XP Embedded Edition with custom express install database engine.

Things gets complicated as Sega has plans to re-enter the console market with DX9c class PowerVR 5(5th generation).