Let's build-a-console; Fantasy Console Design

[Quto]

Player 1
Press Start​

Let's face it, at one point in your childhood, teen hood or some other hood, you had the big 3-4 companies who controlled video gaming and the market, along with it's craft, evolved to a point that it urked you. More during the birth of the HD generation of gaming, where the PS3 was a lot of $$$, the Xbox 360's Online services cost as much $$$ as when you need to purchase a video game and the Wii was.... 'WAGGLE, WAGGLE, WAGGLE!'( ... I don't have much about PC other than it's had it's fair share of a bad title reign.)

Let's face it, you we're sick of it. So, as a gamer, you probably took things as far to try and design your own game console, but you aren't a hardware nut and there are places that get deep into this sort of thing that they sodder their own game cartridges from scratch, including the circuit boards, rom chips and custom shells. You took this passion to that point and stopped or you went on with it anyway for kicks until you had to stop at the $$$ needed for a prototype...

I guess what I'm asking is, if you could design a game console of your own, how would you construct it? what type of processing power would you give it? How far would you go to blue the lines of reality or back away from it for the safety of the people? Would you rip off of the PS Vita and add SOME LOUSY L2 OR R2 BUTTONS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD?! COME ON PEOPLE, IT'S NOT THAT HARD! I DON'T CARE IF THE REAR TOUCH SCREEN FULFILLS THAT NEED, THAT TOUCHPAD AREA IS BARELY CALIBRATED CORRECTLY AND WASN'T DESIGNED FOR THIS! Or would you do a different design?

Maybe you would rebuild another console for the next generation to enjoy that was scrapped to time and the failure of popularity contests.... I'd like to see what you folks come up with.

---

I had more than one idea growing up as a kid, so I'm just going to lay my cards on the table with one Idea I came up with.... And no, it isn't a Dreamcast 2, though I wish it was.

Glade:
This was a portable game console idea that would run games at the same capacity of a Playstation 2 or Xbox Origional, With shoulder buttons and small but click R and L2 buttons on the back of the console. It would use a touch screen for both game play mechanics, navigating the menu in an XMB style where swiping left or right, you would arrive in a section dedicated to what it would provide. The game menu would have tiles you could change to look like Disks or cartridges for the Asthetic for digital downloaded titles and put them in different viewing modes, to either view your collection by title or view the collection by a 'games shelf' and selecting, double tapping the title or dragging it to a disk/cartridge slot on the screen would run the game. Music would appear as Music CD's and give the ability to play music over your games.

Button Layouts, you would have your Digital Directional Keys, on your left, your ABXY on your right. You would have control sticks as well, though when first thinking on this crazy design didn't know anything about slide pads, so I came up witht he mouse sticks or pointer nubs you find on old Laptops but have th3e design to be more like very responsive nubs.... Which nintendo uses as a right stick on the 'new' 3DS. As for the console's Shape, It would look like your standard PSP-1000 model in shape though the bottom balf of the console would be about 10% more square to make room for 'dual' nubs and the console would take cartridges to run it's physical library.

What made me quit this ridiculous concept at the time was knowledge. You learn more about khow much it takes to manufacture your own mediums to run on your newly made hardware and while you can pull the components for most of this stuff off the shelf, you still need to sodder it together and doesn't get me started on firmware, batteries security, and the other parts... To put bluntly, to put something as basic as this together at the time I even dreamt of it was ridiculous... Marketing and finding support for this hilarious thing is another matter, however this was a crazy attempt by a younger me at the time.

 

[gimmepie]

My ideal console would probably end up very similar to the Switch, combining everything I love about the Switch with everything I love about PC gaming with Steam, and to a lesser extent Epic Games.

The console itself would be more like a controller than anything. It would be something of a hybridisation of the structure of a PS4 controller and the Switch with a rounded handle design reminiscent of the former with a 6-inch screen set into the centre, rising slightly above the rest of the controller. It would naturally have a somewhat stockier build to accommodate this, probably around that of the Switch Pro Controller but not as bulbous.

The layout would have four directional arrows on the left with a small joystick below and slightly towards the centre. The right side would have a/b/c/d (because a/b/x/y is weird) buttons in the same formation as the directional arrows with a second joystick below and slightly to the centre. The power and menu buttons would be central on the controller, below the screen. Dual trigger buttons would sit above and to the back on the handles. Behind the screen, centred between the trigger buttons would be a micro usb port for charging and a hdmi port.

The functioning of the device would take the best part of modern PC gaming and make that a key focus. The purchase of games would be entirely digital, purchased off of an online store that the owner would create an account for, which would naturally make a point of being open to indie development in much the way Steam is currently in order to ensure a wide catalogue of games. Storage would exist on the device, there's a 512gb micro sd in existence now so I'm sure that'd be perfectly possible to do even with the software for running the device present. However, the option to back files up to a cloud would also be present - both to allow for preservation of saved data if your console was damaged, but also to ensure backwards compatibility for future versions of the device.

The console itself would naturally be playable as an ordinary handheld, with some of that extra bulk allowing for a better battery than the Switch. However, it would also be connectable with both Smart TVs and computers through a USB Bluetooth (or infrared, whichever is better - probably Bluetooth) connector or via a HDMI cable if you wanted to maximise performance. Naturally, the controller screen goes dark once linked up to another device with a bigger one.

Mutli-player could be done long distance or in person thanks to the internet and the presence of Bluetooth hardware already being present, with the option for two devices to link up and use a single larger screen on a TV or PC in split screen mode (not entirely sure how one would pull this off though ngl).

As for specs, I don't know much about that stuff, but I see no reason why this wouldn't be able to at the least match the Switch for processing power and all that, but I think the ideal for something along these lines would be a bit more oomph, comparable to the PS4 maybe. I don't think going to the crazy levels that the PS5 is apparently going to reach is exactly a necessity when given all the utility you'd be getting here.

What would I call this? I have no idea. I don't have a name for it. I don't even know if this would be physically possible, although I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be either (except maybe for the split-screening). Feel free to rip me a new asshole for every word I just said lol.