http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/asustek-vows-to-out-apple-apple/

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/asus-nintendo-wii,news-31322.html

"According to comments made by Jonathan Tsang, the vice chairman of Asus, in an interview with the New York Times, the Taiwanese computer maker has ‘polished off’ a video game system it claims can rival the Wii.

“We have a product we think is better than the Wii,” Tsang said. “But the content is complicated.”

Asus claims to have developed a system that has controllers that reflect motion better than the Wii controllers

...

Asus’s problem isn’t with the hardware, given its systems design and production know-how, but rather getting the software support. A console is only as good as the games it plays, and right now Asus doesn’t have the games.

“Sometimes it is a chicken-and-egg problem,” Tsang added. “We don’t have the chicken, so cannot have the egg.”

Interesting. Asus unquestionably has the hardware expertise, however the console hardware is the least important part: game support and customer base (marketing) are far more important to commercial success.

And, if it launched, how would it make itself stand out? If they just clone existing consoles how will they persuade customers to buy it?

It would be very hard to build a software base from the ground-up, especially in this environment. Their best bet is to buy their way in. Take over some troubled publisher somewhere and go.

Either that, or form a partnership for that console specifically, like how NEC paired with Hudson to make the PC Engine/TurboGrafx16

Asus is the Future! Now......B_3_L_I_E_V_E

yeah, i see failure if it launches. It would be better to launch in fashion with a new gen as devs would probably be more inclined to throw it a bone as well.

this came out of nowhere

That was kinda unexpected. I could name a few companies I thought might be likely entrants into the console war, and Asus would have never made the list.

It'll be interesting to see if it ever releases.

awesome! we need more competition

I love ASUS hardware, I swear by their mobos, but they dont have the marketing talent needed to make it in the industry, nor the casual market brandname recognition. Btw, how do you do better than 1:1 motion sensing?

what do they make anyways?

And it's going straight back to nowhere. Even if the company had the ability to compete with the Wii, DS, 360, PC, PS3, PSP, iphone and mobiles for game developer resource attention. How successful would a "hey look we can be like the Wii" console be? "Hey have you heard about that new games console that's like the Wii?" "No I haven't, but who cares because I already have a Wii... with games!"