Apple Console Rumour Resurfaces

1up has commentary on speculation from an industry analyst, which GamesIndustry.biz has published. Prudential analyst Jesse Tortora gesticulates wildly in the direction of renewed interest by Apple in the games market. From the GI.biz article: "We think the videogame market represents a distinct possibility for Apple, especially considering that it recently announced the availability of videogames for its iPod through its iTunes store ... The game console device could be morphed out of some combination of the MacMini and iTV, while the handheld player could be developed as an enhancement for a future version of the widescreen iPod."

Comments

It'll work great!

[the_humeister]

Just like their last one. BTW, isn't the console market getting a little crowded already?

Re:It'll work great!

[Anonymous Coward]

there's only 3 right now. 4, if you count the xavix.

The market has survived having more than 4 consoles in the past - look at the early 90's:
SNES, Genesis, Turbografx, Neo Geo. All of these were sucessful consoles with great games, though the latter two were somewhat niche.

the mid 90's got a bit crazy, however: besides the big 3 (playstation, saturn, and n64) there was the 3d0, jaguar, cd-i, pippin, and amiga cd32. and that's just in america. We currently aren't anywhere near that.

Re:Wrong end of the stick

[Kayamon]

Despite what you may have read in the popular press, the Xbox isn't just a modified PC running Windows.

It runs it's own kernel, which is based loosly from the NT kernel. There's no GUI code at all present. There's no GDI/USER stuff. Also, you get almost direct access to the GPU, which is the essential path needed for any decently-performing console.

If Apple were to try this themselves, they'd need to throw out most of OS X and drop back to just running the Darwin kernel. They'd need to pick a GPU and stick with it for a few years, and give the developers complete access to it's internals.

It'd be a Mac in spirit, but not in practice.

Re:controllers will be like their mice

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Your comment does not really deserve a reply being a joke and redundant at the same time, but if you've seen Apple's recent mice I'd say they are of the same mentality as the Wiimote. That is to say, they are designed to be easy and accessible to everyone and to encourage developers to do the right thing. At the same time, they can easily enable power users to have the myriad buttons they need and want. In fact, Apple's "mighty mouse" is the only mouse I've ever seen where a shared computer can have one hardware mouse with one button for kids and novices and multiple buttons for expert users. I've seen firsthand what happens when novice users try to operate one of those four button designs favored by power users and I've cursed at trying to use the same mouse (as I'm accustomed to three or more). I find it sad that people still drag this old horse out of the closet, even if they're trying to be funny.