Best route towards the creation of a low-cost/low-power console?

[Gubbi]

I believe it's a newer spin of the CPU that was in Dreamcast.

Oooh, a $50 Dreamcast II

Cheers

 

[Squeak]

2009, believe!

 

[cthellis42]

That's not the primary storage - the DVD drive is. I think Blackraven is suggesting an optical, motorised storage can be done away with (download titles only?) to drop the power consumption.

I'm pretty sure that HDD's and optical disk drives have pitiful power consumption numbers compared to the chipset draw (and what's needed to cool them), so is really seems like the only thing to talk about is "what chips can run the coolest while offering the most performance."

HDD's would run afoul of the "low cost" bit, but then so would anything solid state in comparison, so really optical disks would be what you WANT. The key would be finding the smallest and coolest chips that offer substantial performance, so you can keep the power draw down, the box size small (not needing room for heatsinks, fans, airflow, large power supplies...) and so on.

Optical drives would take up more space than a solid state solution, but it saves on cost, offers more capacity, and... well... who in heck would want to make a console SMALLER than a ROM drive? Anything physically smaller, and people will just start thinking it's a joke in general.

 

[ihamoitc2005]

Low cost, low power

This is my first post here

I'm thinking of a new low-cost TV game console and would like to hear from the community here about the possible chipset/SoC that would go inside.

I planned to use i.MX31, but dropped it because it needs an additional TV module and only has powerVR MBX Lite. Then I thought of OMAP3430, but could not find which powerVR SGX chipset it uses. I have not looked at what Intel, VIA, nVidia, and AMD can provide. So, what do you think?

Best low cost low power consoles available:

PS2
GameCube
Wii

Use solution with lowest part and development cost.

Why do you feel there is a market for this?