The EVO 2 seems like a very interesting new console, running on Android, and with a $130 price tag, it may just be the new thing in gaming. Specs include:

Samsung 1.2 GHz Processor
NVIDIA Graphics (Unspecified card)
512 MB DDR2 RAM
HDMI Support
WiFi
Motion control coming soon
$130 (Initially priced at $250)
Charity, for every EVO 2 sold, 1 will be donated to poor people.

Personally, if this lives to its name, I'm sold. Comments?

And to prove that this is a real thing(cough,TC01,cough), look at these links:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/25/evo-2-console-promises-to-bring-android-gaming-to-your-tv-this-f/

http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-brief/56234-evo-2-console-will-be-like-an-android-powered-xbox

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/26/evo-2-console-puts-android-in-a-box/

http://store.envizionsinc.com/gamebox-console-powered-by-android-pre-order.html

So after our discussion on IRC, and after you called me out in the first post, I felt obligated to post.

This sort of thing is further evidence of how console manufacturers are being pushed out by smartphone manufacturers; what Sony and Microsoft are doing/trying to do with the Xperia Play and Windows Phone 7 are others.

The specs are nice, although Android 2.2 on a large-screen device is slightly less exciting.

If I understand correctly, it'll just be for playing games from the Android Market? I see a minor problem with that; and that is that I'm not sure how many games people would actually rather play on a console than on their phone (or tablet). Most Android (and iPhone and etc) tend to be more "casual" games, I'd say. True, there are exceptions to that; but I don't know how many people would want to play them on a console either.

Then again, I'm someone who doesn't get the point of consoles in general, so I'm probably not qualified to comment.

The company is pushing for companies to develop EVO only games. They're selling free SDK consoles right now, but you have to pay a $150 yearly "support" fee. This is more damning evidence that it really is not vaporware.

Ah, I see. That sounds more promising then; assuming, of course, companies do actually develop such games.

The whole thing smells very fishy. The website is extremely amateurish, the developer prices are rather high, they have a track record of delivering vapourware (see: EVO 1) and the device itself is not exactly attractive, even if it exists at all (the specs are pretty feeble, and if you're going to use Android you might as well go for a relatively recent version, surely)?

I am too lazy to actually make my own post so instead I quote people and then don't say anything new.

It seems like a pipe-dream, really. I'm sure they have good intentions, but I just don't see this actually getting off the ground.

The thing has no games and the hardware is only a little faster than a Wii.

Nobody in their right mind would buy this hunk of junk.

Other than the processor, those are more or less the same specs as the Xbox 360. Granted, I don't think the Android OS can run games as smoothly as the built-in firmware of a console. Still, if they threw in a decent processor and a more modern Video card, this would be the ideal console for homebrew junkies like myself.

EDIT- just came across this and thought it was relevant:

http://blastmagazine.com/the-issue/the-top-five-failed-apple-products/#2

Apparently Apple tried just this nearly 20 years ago, and failed abysmally.

You seem to forget that most of the people in the United States are out of their right minds.

Uh, what? The CPU is without a doubt much slower than the 360. The GPU is pretty much entirely unknown (but hint, it's much slower than the 360). The only other spec that kind of matters is RAM, which is sort of similar to the 360 in *quantity*, but bandwidth and latency is unknown (hint, it's much slower than the 360).

For the sake of argument, let's assume it's a Tegra 2 class chip (fastest NVIDIA arm graphics that's available currently, and given the price point the most likely candidate):

Tegra 2 vs. 360

Memory bandwidth: ~2.7gb/s vs. 22.4gb/s
GPU GFLOPS: ~5.3 vs. 240
Pixel pipelines: 8 (4+4) vs. 48 (unified)
TMU: 2 vs. 16

I don't know why, but everyone seems to be under this bizarre idea that ARM GPUs are much, much faster than they actually are. Must be Nvidia's and Apple's marketing at work.

Oh, and keep in mind that the drivers for the ARM GPUs haven't had *nearly* as much optimization and work as the drivers for console and desktop GPUs (console GPUs essentially are desktop GPUs)



And why are you singling out the US? Pretty sure the US is the only country smart enough to not buy a hunk of junk Symbian phone just because it says "Nokia" on it

Why do you think I said "other than the processor"?



Those will be good points, if they turn out to be true. You're making a lot of assumptions here. We don't know that they're going to use those components. For all we know, they could use what the xbox has plus a generation or two. If they are stupid enough to put cell phone parts in a console, than this will fail harder than the Pippin, and we'll all look stupid for even acknowledging it's existence.

Of course it uses cell phone parts - that isn't even an assumption. Android doesn't run on anything other than ARM at the moment, and Samsung doesn't make any CPUs that aren't ARM. Moreover, there is no way you are hitting a $130 price point with anything other than ARM.

And no, they can't use what the "xbox has plus a generation or two" as they are *extremely* different architectures. You can't take a desktop GPU and pair it with an ARM CPU - that just doesn't work.

If those specs are actually accurate, it is definitely a Tegra 2 SoC, there just isn't any other option. I guess they could delay for Tegra 3, but that's going to drive up the price.

No love for the x86 version?

Android is just a linux derivative. If someone wants to run it on and x86 they can, it would just take a good bit of tinkering.

And if they did use x86, you could still hit that price point with xbox-tier components, seeing as the xbox itself is considerably less than that now.

That said, it is looking more and more like it's just gonna be a cell phone that can't make calls and has to plug into your TV. If that is indeed the case, then we're all wasting our time talking about it.

Actually you already can run Android on x86 hardware thanks to the Android x86 project they even have 3d accel working with the i915 and radeon mesa drivers.

But yeah it will most likely end up being a an arm based setup which as said would be pointless next to the PPC powerhouses that are the last gen consoles.

Linux is just a kernel, there is a *TON* more to Android than just a kernel, and a good bit of it that cares a lot about the platform.



xbox 1 I assume you mean? Xbox 1 is really slow, ARM is actually pretty close to that (probably faster tbh). Xbox 360 isn't x86, and is more expensive.



I can't find anything to back up 3d accel working with radeon drivers, but it doesn't really matter as the performance of the open source drivers sucks anyway. The closed source ones won't work, as Android doesn't use Xorg. Even the new open source radeon drivers (the ones with real hardware acceleration, not the older mesa ones) won't work without significant effort as yet again, it is for Xorg. Also, the specs say "Nvidia" - so whether or not android-x86 works with Intel's and AMD's open source drivers is rather irrelevant since it doesn't have an Intel or AMD GPU.

More importantly, though, most Android games use native code - and only have an ARM version available. So even if you get Android running on other architectures, most games won't run anyway, which largely defeats the point of a machine meant for playing games.

Phoronix News Article Relevent Mesa Commit for r600g
Actually Gallium3D(the new mesa) based drivers don't require Xorg at all only libdrm and a few other lib's. Android support appears to have been merged into the mesa git tree around August 16th and looking through the commits it looks like they have just about all the Gallium3d drivers working, including nouveau. It also has support for OpenGLES which is what android uses and has had that support for a while. That said I doubt they would use nouveau instead of working directly with Nvidia, and iirc nouveau doesn't support the Tegra series chips at all anyway.
As to your comments about the performance of the FOSS radeon driver, for r300 to r500 cards the driver is on par with the old catalyst versions that supported those cards aside from the missing features such as MSAA. The newer HDxxx cards are still lagging a bit but it is very usable and I can game comfortably with my Mobility HD4670 using them, though I'm sure Catalyst would be faster.


As to most Android games using native code, where do you get that most from, is there a statistic somewhere? My understanding was that almost none of the apps in the market used native code but I could be wrong.

Uh, as far as I know, just about all Android apps are written in Java, which doesn't necessitate any native code.

As for the Xbox 360:

http://www.gamestop.com/xbox-360/consoles/xbox-360-pro-20gb-microsoft-refurbished/75847

http://www.gamestop.com/xbox-360/consoles/xbox-360-system-with-wired-controller-gamestop-refurbished/43323

http://www.gamestop.com/xbox-360/games/xbox-360-pro-20gb-microsoft-refurbished-something-for-everyone-bundle/91934

Like I said, hitting the $130 price point with Xbox(360) components isn't hard. You seem to think it's much much more powerful(and thus more expensive) than it actually is. Must be Microsoft's marketing at work.

Those are all refurbished. That's the word they use for game systems where the hard drive crashed, or the motherboard went up in smoke. Refurbished means that you get a *lot* less, as you really are getting your money's worth of parts, which isn't much.

I've ALWAYS bought refurbished and they've worked fine. Refurbished means it was repaired after breaking. Granted, you can't exactly mass produce refurbished hardware, but a lot the full retail price at this point is markup. You can also release a console at less than the cost of parts and make up the difference in game sales. This would be rather difficult for the evo though since a hefty majority of it's games are free downloads.

It is possible to use pre-owned and refurbished components in a console, but you'd only be able to release a limited number of them. That could also be another selling point(only x were made!).