We had a thread about Zeebo ages ago. Anyway, with all the Famiclones and equivalents in South-America, i guess this fits the category, only that Zeebo seems to have an actual businessmodel behind it.
It would be interesting to see how its sales will pick up.

For a second, I thought this was about the iPod/Phone.

The pad hes using at 2:23 in that vid...
looks kinda like the Dualshock2

So if I remove a game I'll have to pay to re-download it? doesn't sound too appealing to me.

More or less, yes. If you took out the DVD, you'd also reduce the cooling needed, and could re-vamp the console to be a fraction of it's current size.

I would stick with the current Arcade hard drive solution - the 256MB card, but upgrade it to something far more robust - in the 1-2GB range (which would be enough for a decent bit of games).

The business model of the Zeebo is great, and is the approach needed for pirate-infested market. If your offering games at pirate prices ($5-15 USD), then your going to be able to compete with the pirates on some level. Throw in Gold membership for free, for online play (since your getting a ton of royalties from XBLA games), and you have a winner.

My take on it is: Why charge so much for a console in a country that'll never legitimately buy your games? If you can make something, anything, and build marketshare, it would be worth it. A $100-$150 USD Arcade could do gangbusters in China, SE Asia, S-Africa and Latin America. Add in the fact that it'd be neutered for anything but your content, and it could do well. Brazil still makes Genesis machines, so you could have a long-term console, and build up an actual console gaming base in the countries.

Not only this, you build up gaming profiles in those countries you can sweep with your metrics teams - find out what makes a Brazilian gamer 'tick', and understand their habits, so when you do launch a 'real' console, you know what they will be interested in, and what they want.

The thing that's become obvious to me is that pirates make money on their games (or else they wouldn't do it, right?) Why don't the Big 3 sell their software, or products at pirate prices? Yes, it wouldn't be a lot of money, but you'd effectively end piracy since they can't make the software for as much as Nintendo, MS or Sony could.

And for the potential profits of software in emerging markets, I always like to point to OS totals for movies:

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/intl/brazil/?yr=2009&wk=12&p=.htm

What's interesting about Brazil is that it's theatre market is larger than some European countries like the Czech Republic, and Finland. Slumdog Millionaire made over $500,000 USD last week on it's 3rd week there. That's actually quite good for any overseas movie, much less a niche movie like SM. At a $3,000 PTA in Brazil, you'd think they have the economy to purchase a lot of games - just not at American/European software prices.

But at the $5-10 level, I think they'd buy a lot.

At least they are trying.

This console sounds like cheap garbage that makes even the Wii look good.

However, I will keep my eye on this. Who knows, it might be worth buying.

it will be the sexiest console thic gen and i cant even begin to imagine the kinda old skool retro games you will be seeing on the console.

sounds like a success. the markets they have targeted are densly and over populated and dont have much money. this will be the most affordable console in the history of video games. i can even see certain hardcore gamers buying it in the eu and usa. it costs peanuts and so do the games.

haha...yeah they should have stuck with the double dragon 2 format

Like I said, it may be worth buying. If it could be something like the PS1 was, I'll pick one up for it's cheap price.