An Open Game Console Standard

[ZephyrXero]

Hey everyone. Don't mean to spam or anything, but I'm trying to spread the word of a new project I'm working on. I'm working to create a non-profit organization called the Open Game Console Consortium that will define a standard from which multiple manufacturers can release their own machines, but they will play the exact same games (and no, I'm not talking about a PC). It will all be built off of Linux and Open Source Software, so if any of you are interested in contributing, please join us.

PS. If you have Digg account, I'm trying to get it mentioned there today

[pmj]

I could fill a whole page of reasons why this is impossible, but they're so obvious that you must have thought of most of them yourself already. And that brings me to my question: how on earth do you intend to pull this off?

[ZephyrXero]

I could fill a whole page of reasons why this is impossible, but they're so obvious that you must have thought of most of them yourself already. And that brings me to my question: how on earth do you intend to pull this off?

Read the proposal on the site. I've spent almost 2 years working on these so-called "impossible" problems in preparation for today.

[Brunellus]

The open game console already exists: commodity PC hardware running Linux.

Where's my revolution? Oh wait, there isn't one, for all the usual "not-ready-for-the-desktop" reasons.

[MaximB]

yep , if you are talking about OS ...we have it right here
Linux can run on ANY architecture exists.
and some other free open sourced OS can be the "standard" like Open Solaris and BSD.

but like you can see not everyone using those open standards .
to the developers we have OpenGL ...but many are still using DirectX.

so what will be different with Hardware ?

[ZephyrXero]

There are quite a few key differences for game developers between working on a specific console vs. the broad PC landscape. Developing for a console means you only have to focus on one set of hardware rather than the thousands of different combinations possible with PCs. This allows them to optimize their code much much more and to spend more time on the actual game rather than trying to support the numerous pieces of hardware potential players might have. With a console, developers know exactly what hardware and OS you will have, and can exploit that to the fullest rather than trying to write overly generic code that ends up requiring much more powerful hardware as a result. For an example, just look at the original Xbox. It was basically just a frozen set of PC hardware, and because of these advantages consoles have offer over PCs, many games are capable of running just as well, if not better on a 766mhz Celeron, with only 64MB of RAM and a GeForce 3 than they could on a PC with a 3Ghz P4 with 512MB of RAM and modern, mid-line graphics card. There's a reason more and more developers are abandoning the PC gaming market. And for those of us interested in freedom, an open game console format is our only hope.

[MkfIbK7a]

there is a linux based portable video game called GP2x
http://www.gp2x.com/
check it out!

[BarfBag]

there is a linux based portable video game called GP2x
http://www.gp2x.com/
check it out!

Holy crap, man! That looks amazing!

[Brunellus]

Holy crap, man! That looks amazing!

equally amazing is the lack of titles available for it.

[MkfIbK7a]

actually you can download free games for it such as
clonk
i love clonk here is the homepage
www.clonk.de
and the wiki of the port to the GP2x
http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/Clonk2X