I said it in another thread, but these consoles have got to at least match what my smartphone can do already, else they're facing an uphill battle.
Good post, but on this point I humbly think you've got it exactly backwards. (Assuming that you are saying that consoles need to be good at the things that smartphones are good at, in order to be "worthwhile".) Smartphones are already here, obviously. Many people own them; and they seem to like them. Ditto for tablets, albeit those don't have quite the same market penetration, yet. And as a rule, people
aren't clamoring
for something that they already have. Much the same way that people aren't pining for a refrigerator that also includes a microwave (at the expense of refrigerator space). They've already
got a microwave, and would prefer their refrigerator-dollars go towards keeping things cold.
"Matching" what my phone already does is close to useless. Because my phone has already got that covered. Being an awesome, modern game console
is useful to me, because I
don't have one of those anymore. (It got all old and stuff)
I couldn't
care less if I can keep 12 browser tabs open while playing Halo. If I desperately need to look at something right in the middle of a game(!), I'll just pull out my phone, or my tablet, or use my "smart TV", or just change TV input so it displays my fricking PC! Does shoehorning this sort of mid-game browser functionality into my console add value? Sure, I suppose. But it's a pretty tiny increment, since I've already
got several other ways to accomplish the same thing, many of them with dedicated screens, and none of them "reserve" resources away from the game I'm (supposedly) playing.
Hey, I'm all for letting my console do new things, and even not-so-new things, but I don't typically need it to do them while I'm playing a game. I'm happy to wait until I'm done playing, at which time those functions can use up all the RAM they want. (Some things, like internet music streaming, would be nice to have concurrent with gaming, but I'm not coming up with many other use cases.)
Okay, streaming actual game content (like a moving map) to my tablet or phone might be cool.
