Acer to develop a console-style gaming PC

[Descendency]

No doubt, acer is one of the premiere PC/notebook manufacturers. However, as I already said, the concept won't be more than a hardcore concept that will probably cost quite a bit and won't be any different than the current PC market. Which is the problem.

[Power666]

Source please.

There is a away to significantly cut the costs of the PC down into the realm of where consoles currently sit. For example, why have a separate board for a graphics card when that can be moved to the motherboard? Why have DIMM slots when memory can be soldier on while simultaneously saving a bit of money and increase performance? Other things like power management and VRM circuitry between the CPU and GPU can be merged to further cut costs. Along the same road, the power supply could be integrated onto the main board, potentially shaving costs more. The cooling system between the CPU and GPU could be made the same to take advantage of economies of scale. It gives developers a relatively fixed set of specs to work with.

While these hardware features go against traditional PC ideology of an open and expandable platform, they're what will decrease the system's size for the living room and provide a price people can afford.

Acer can't get into the console market with a PC platform if they're selling the system at a loss. The only way for Acer to make money on royalties is if they provide their own operating system that developers program to. Such a move would be rather unwise as it literally would be a repeat of what MS did with the original Xbox. While the original Xbox had the benefit of using many Windows centric API's to make porting easier, it was still its own entity. Providing their own OS, API's and developer tools would only fragment the market more than it already is.

A Linux software suite would work on the console but they wouldn't be able to acquire developer royalties this way.

Acer could do something radical with virtualization. While providing their own OS, they could provide methods for installing and running Windows on top of everything for PC games. That way users would be able to get the benefit of PC games and applications while Acer would get some royalties in the process. Also by hiding away Windows, they would able to focus their own OS on more media center functionality.

[Descendency]

Originally Posted by Power666

While these hardware features go against traditional PC ideology

And against what the article originally mentioned. The concept of an open case would be opposing to the idea of soldering the memory onto the board which would "close" the case. While people can talk all they want about boosting the GPU (shader count, clock speeds, etc) at some there will need to be more memory for the GPU to use.

The initial setup obviously isn't the problem. Consoles can already do that. It's the incremental upgrades that will follow. It will be WAY outside of the casual market, which right now is clearly dominating at least one of the consoles and continues to dominate much of the past generation.

If casuals don't game online, then how likely is it to have them replacing parts in their consoles.

Honestly, I don't understand how it is a console anymore.