I wouldn't mind if Apple entered as a direct competitor to Nintendo going straight for that huge casual poontang. Both are white based consoles with Apple having a huge mindshare at the moment.
They just need a wii-type motion control parlour trick to get ppl interested.
If your an iPhone/iTouch owner, you wouldn't need one, the console would supplement already owned devices, justifying an apple ecosystem, outside of local multiplayer games which the move would be to have anyone with an "i" device come over and easily join a local game via wifi or bluetooth, then I just leave my friends house with my phone which just doubled as a controller.
Eco system.
One of Sony's biggest problem is people's perception on them.
Apple uses proprietary format BS, just like Sony, but they are fine because they are trendy. When Sony used to be trendy, their proprietary formats were "oh, it's different because it's better".
They need to change the way people view them. The guy on the first page saying the Xperia phones were better is a great example. Everybody quickly jumped on him because of Sony's track record with android and xperias.
But the phone in question, the new Xperia S (LT26i, the same one i bought recently) is very different from the old models and it is, in fact, better than any iPhone. (not a surprise since it was released to go against the next iteration of iPhones from Apple.
The way people are ready to quickly discard them, without even knowing which product they are making, is a lot more serious than the quality of the products they are making it.
I don't know how they are going to change this perceived image, but i hope Kaz has at least a plan for this.
just like the 360 is trendy.
Any other company with proprietary hard drives which put the console on par if not at a higher price than the competition, online fees, rrod expecation that just about every console bought would get the error and still bought above all others. Why? In the U.S. the only other name brand besides apple's "i" products is the xbox 360. If sony charged for online and had rrrod and proprietary hard drives they would have had to eject stringer and cut losses much earlier on.
Next gen will be rough for sony because they could offer the best console for the consumer and the developer at an aggressively competitive price and a good line up of new exclusives at launch but the general perception and hate from some game sites will still be very bad.
I know people that hate sony and don't know why. I've even heard from gamestop managers who based on their employees comments like "sony online is broken" actually thought sony games could not or were not made to go online as if it were a wii or a last gen console. Throw in a few "F U Sony" gaming blogs and bam, not cool to support sony.
My favorite is people that say they prefer android over iOS because they prefer open hardware and network and hate everything closed and proprietary they want to do what they want to do with the hardware they bought. Then say they prefer the 360 which is closed, proprietary and nickle and dimed and no xbox media center for the console. one could say that its worth it becuase it just works which would then question their android vs iOS argument as the same can be said for iOS, it just works.