I don't know about others but poor (relative to PC and console) game performance on mobile games is only acceptable to me because the machine fits in my pockets.
I don't sit in my living room to play iOS/Android games, the fact that the device is hooked to a bigger screen won't change that.
Also, they seem to be confusing two target audiences here. People that grew up with games as a central part of their lives are (in my experience) people that STILL play a lot of games and prefer to do so on consoles and a PC, while people who are into social and mobile games are mostly casual people that won't be bothered to sit in front of a big screen to play anyways.
I've felt like the console market was ready for some change for a while but envisioned it as a kind of Steam-console more than a big screen phone. That being said, I wish the best of luck to these guys, it's an ambitious and exciting project.
Did you watch the video? I'm not sure what resolution that is pushing, but it clearly beats the Wii hands down and looks to be roughly competitive with the XBox 360/PS3. If that's 1080p it may even have a slight edge on them. (But I'd guess 720p. For the most part on a TV console it's not really worth pushing twice the pixels for such a marginal image quality gain.)
Pushing 1080p off a mobile GPU on a console with 1Gb of RAM is cool and all but good luck doing anything else impressive besides... well pushing 1080p. This thing is closer to a phone than a real console.
The consoles are 7 years old. Mobile games are getting pretty close to their performance. All the new ARM GPU architectures coming out this year and next year will support OpenGL ES 3.0 (OpenGL 3.2 features) and OpenCL 1.1.
Next year's hardware should also be 4-5x faster in GPU performance than Tegra 3 (that includes Tegra 4, as well as other chips), and around 300 gigaflops each, which I think already surpasses the Xbox 360 and PS3, or it's around as powerful.
If Google and many of their partners would put these chips in $99 set top boxes/consoles, and let them play 3D Android games, it could disrupt the console market, simply by flooding the market with the help of multiple manufacturers, a low price, and a decent gaming platform, that could only grow bigger if it takes off, not unlike how Google dominates the smartphone market through the sheer number of Android devices released by many, many manufacturers.
I just hope Google is smart enough to recognize this and actually go for it, instead of focusing solely on their "smart TV" strategy with their Google TV boxes.
They should be able to meet the same schedule with Tegra 4 or quad Krait (although at higher cost). So someone else may be shipping a box that's 4x the performance at the same time.
You might find it educational to compare the specs of the "real consoles" to your phones, and don't forget to account for the fact that the "real consoles" are running somewhat older CPUs and stuff so the GHz difference isn't necessarily reflected by straight-up division. Also the newer GPUs include quite a few newer tricks and capabilities that the current console gen don't have.
Remember, the XBox 360 is now coming up fast on seven years old. By the time this comes out, eight. It's a bit fuzzy when a phone/tablet gets released that completely beats the XBox 360/PS3 due to the inability to easily directly compare the stats, but if it hasn't already happened it'll certainly happen next year, no question.
Also, that video was of games, not just video. I mean, how much more concrete a proof do you need that games are possible than... games?
That and a lot of very good indie PC games come with controller support out of the box. For example, I bought Super Meat Boy on Steam, I'd be glad to play it on a Steam Box!
Given the relative free-for-all mentality that seems to be going on at Valve (which is far from a bad thing imo!), I won't take a patent application as a definite sign that Valve (a software company) will be unveiling a console anytime soon.
I don't sit in my living room to play iOS/Android games, the fact that the device is hooked to a bigger screen won't change that.
Also, they seem to be confusing two target audiences here. People that grew up with games as a central part of their lives are (in my experience) people that STILL play a lot of games and prefer to do so on consoles and a PC, while people who are into social and mobile games are mostly casual people that won't be bothered to sit in front of a big screen to play anyways.
I've felt like the console market was ready for some change for a while but envisioned it as a kind of Steam-console more than a big screen phone. That being said, I wish the best of luck to these guys, it's an ambitious and exciting project.