Commercial console games are run on top of a minimalist, low-overhead runtime environment, often tweaked for quasi-real time response (RTOS) and push the hardware to the max (hopefully). You simply cannot expect the same kind of low latency performance out of a general purpose operating system (GPOS) like Linux or Darwin/OSX. In the past, homebrew developers have often resorted to coding on these POSIX platforms (NetBSD/KallistiOS on the Sega Dreamcast, Linux on the PS2), but only because the official development environments and hardware were unavailable to them. It definitely hurts your Doom 3 framerate to load up a bloated POSIX kernel.
Actually, I don't really think it would. Just imagine trying to play a top notch OpenGL game while browsing through Safari or the iTunes Music store at the same time on a single piece of hardware, no matter how powerful it claims to be. The almighty Cell processor would most likely still be outperformed by a separate game console and media center / thin client PC a la Mac Mini standing beside each other and working away at their respective tasks.
Slashdot Mirror
Playstation = PSX
Playstation 2 = PS2
Playstation 2 + Hard Disk Video Recorder (only marketed in Japan) = PSX
Playstation 3 + Apple = POSX
Commercial console games are run on top of a minimalist, low-overhead runtime environment, often tweaked for quasi-real time response (RTOS) and push the hardware to the max (hopefully). You simply cannot expect the same kind of low latency performance out of a general purpose operating system (GPOS) like Linux or Darwin/OSX. In the past, homebrew developers have often resorted to coding on these POSIX platforms (NetBSD/KallistiOS on the Sega Dreamcast, Linux on the PS2), but only because the official development environments and hardware were unavailable to them. It definitely hurts your Doom 3 framerate to load up a bloated POSIX kernel.
Actually, I don't really think it would. Just imagine trying to play a top notch OpenGL game while browsing through Safari or the iTunes Music store at the same time on a single piece of hardware, no matter how powerful it claims to be. The almighty Cell processor would most likely still be outperformed by a separate game console and media center / thin client PC a la Mac Mini standing beside each other and working away at their respective tasks.