Microconsole

A microconsole is a home video game console that is typically powered by low-cost computing hardware, making the console lower-priced compared to other home consoles on the market. The majority of microconsoles, with a few exceptions such as the PlayStation TV and OnLive Game System, are Android-based digital media players that are bundled with gamepads and marketed as gaming devices. Such microconsoles can be connected to the television to play video games downloaded from an application store such as Google Play. Microconsoles came about in the early 2010s, shortly after the rise of mobile gaming on smartphones and tablet devices from 2008. These units were seen as a means to marry the idea of home video game consoles with smartphone and tablet gaming, taking advantage of the large library of games already available for the Android operating system. While OnLive's MicroConsole brought the name "microconsole" to the field, the term "microconsole" was more widely adapted to describe these units as a whole as it mirrored the concept of microcomputers of the 1970s and 1980s compared to mainframes and minicomputers. Just as microcomputers represented low-cost, less powerful, and smaller form-factor versions of their larger equivalents, microconsoles tend to be similarly available at lower cost using cheaper computation hardware and packaged in smaller systems. In some cases, these packages were small enough to be encased into handheld controllers. In late 2010, cloud gaming startup OnLive released MicroConsole, a television adapter and wireless gamepad that connects the company's video game streaming service to televisions. VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi described the device as representing the company founder's "vision to turn the video game industry upside down" as an inexpensive console providing "high-end games on low-end hardware" that could eliminate the cycle of regular consumer hardware upgrades. The MicroConsole TV adapter was produced at a loss. OnLive's MicroConsole made the company an early leader in the nascent microconsole field.