god stop bumping these threads, i hate reading kwaad's posts.

 I have the same problem with Soriku's posts...

OT:  What about Philipps?

You can't be serious......

I doubt any will jump in directly. I do think though with the cost of being a console company being so high and the risk being amazingly large that you might see more partnerships being developed between companies that are interested in the market. Ones that strike me as obvious are companies like AMD or Intel trying to partner with a console manufacturer. They invest a fair amount in the project and in return get some part of the profits from licensing at the same time they are pushing for their chips to be used in the console allowing them to sell their core products to a wider market. I figure that you will see some other possible combinations with the convergence of consoles, TV, and internet making a variety of interested partnerships.

AMD can become a serious contender if they decide to. AMD64 CPU's and Radeon GPU's on Radeon Motherboards could easily give any console a run for its money.

Intel for all its money would still have to license a decent GPU.

Apple's revenue model is more like Nintendo's, I doubt they will like to lose money and earn it via software. The Ipod h/w makes a lot of money and songs sold via iTunes barely cover their costs. Apple is basically operating iTunes as a service.

EA most likely could. Probably Square Enix.

And of course Apple.

EA + Square + Apple (Thats a Match made in Heaven)

@kwaad, rainbow six, civ games and comand and conqure all caame to the mac... i own them all, but yes it is painfull to be a mac gamer .... maybe the only goodthing out of the intel switch,

apple was considering buying ninitendo before the release of the Wii, jobs met many times with diffrent BigN execs, sadly it never happened, though with apples cash reserves they could still buy controling interest in BigN, and hostil takeovers are nothing new to a jobs apple, both final cut, and itunes came that way (well early versions and the eployees anyway)

oh and PowerPC owns them all

Oh my god... Sony fanboys can be annoying sometimes, but give me those over Apple fanboys any time! They can be even more (actually, radically more) dogmatic and elitist :S

But I don't think Apple has the guts to launch a home console... A handheld, maybe. I hope not, for the above reason.