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To add to the RAM/storage thing, the fact that it's always on the internet is a big deal. Media can be streamed from central servers on-demand, so cut-scenes and things like area-specific textures are less of a big deal.

My biggest worry is the focus on the television. Do you remember the head-mounted display John Carmack was showing around E3? The guy who made it gave an update [1] on the project a few days ago, saying

  1) I am talking to Valve.
  2) I am talking to id/Zenimax/Bethesda
  3) I am talking to Epic
  4) I am talking to Crytek
  5) I am talking to Unity
  6) I am talking to several other development companies

  The extent of their relationships with Oculus varies, but
  I can promise at least a few partnerships... I am working
  with hardware engineers...

  Imagine an HMD with a massive field of view and more
  pixels than 1080p per eye, wireless PC link, built in
  absolute head and hand/weapon/wand positioning, and native
  integration with some (if not all) of the major game
  engines, all for less than $1,000 USD. That can happen in
  2013!

I think next-gen "serious" gaming will move in that direction (by all accounts the immersion is stunning), and I think casual gaming will never move away from mixed-use devices like tablets.

1: http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=138&t=14777&...

While the head-mounted display is very interesting, it does not make sense for a product like this to target a platform that has not yet been released when gaming on the TV will be around for at least 5+ years. Maybe a future version could target a head-mounted display.

Good points there. Will people, not on Kickstarter, buy it if it can't play movies off Netflix? They will only have the budget for one console. I suspect that people will want to run it as their media player and other things, so more RAM the better (plus it will make developers happy!). This is the trajectory of the XBox 360 and the PS3 (as media players). I want this console to disrupt the current market so it has to match those machines. What's also important is a wired network port. Ok, I can forgive it if it doesn't have a DVD player but add several USB ports please! I don't want this console to be a curiosity shelved one month after purchase.

I completely agree on the specs; a Tegra3-based platform has more than enough grunt to deliver a "game console" experience for the sort of indie and free-to-play games this platform will attract.

The only thing i'm concerned about is whether they can get even the hardware they've committed to in a $99 budget. Consider that this has the same hardware as the HTC one X, but without the screen, battery, and 3G connectivity. So they have to not only get the Tegra3 for $99, but also the case and power supply. Even if they manage to get those parts down to $99, they still have to add the controller, which will need it's own processor/controller to track and send the inputs over bluetooth to the console. Not to mention the cost of the controller hardware itself, particularly the touchpad.

The other thing that worries me is the Android base. Is the OS still going to lock code to using the Dalvik/Java-based API? If so then I have no hope of creating any games for the platform in my favourite language, Go. What about native-development, new experimental native game engines or languages? Hopefully they'll open the platform up a bit in this respect and allow some native development through a C API or something.

I definitely hope they pull through and deliver on this project, although I can imagine it not making it's way down to the southern hemisphere very quickly, if at all.

Another way to look at it is that it's the same hardware as the Nexus 7 minus the screen, battery, camera, etc.

Android has supported C (and Mono and Unity) for about 18 months, so those complaints are obsolete.