Would you buy the Google Orbit console?
A new concept design for a Google games machine surfaces with '80s looks and a spec wishlist that would make the Xbox One and PS4 tremble
While Android consoles aren’t a new concept (we’re looking at you Ouya, Project Shield and GameStick), we’ve always wondered what a Google-forged console would look like. After all, if Apple had a stab back in 1996 with the Pippin, what’s stopping the Big G?
Designer Joseph Dumary is clearly on the same page as us, as he’s whipped up a cuboid console concept called the Orbit which shows off what a Google-made console could look like. And in the recesses of his mind, this Google console is an Xbox One and PS4 killer, with outrageous specs that laugh in the face of reality.
Blast from the past
The Orbit has a very ’80s tech feel to it, resembling a cross between a Macintosh TV and the AllSpark cube from Transformers. It doesn’t look like the future, but fans of retro tech will probably appreciate its black VCR finish and industrial IBM-like design.
The Google Orbit can be placed in three different orientations to spice things up a little and the Google-coloured USB ports are a nice touch. The missing corners are presumably running errands and will eventually return to join the rest of the console at some point.
Crazy, crazy specs
We love the way in which concepts stick a middle finger up to reality. Take the Orbit’s 12-core 5GHz processor for example. Or it’s support for 48GB of RAM. Not to mention its 1.5TB hard drive and 4K output resolution.
Did we mention that it can wirelessly broadcast games to up to four tellies simultaneously, without requiring a single HDMI cable?
How about its support for Google Glass gaming, NFC, keyboard and mouse support? Because it can manage all that too.
It’s all a pipe dream of course – especially given that there are serious doubts over the Xbox One and PS4’s ability to play 4K games – but we digress.
We’re secretly hoping that an elite ninja team at Google is already hard at work on the ultimate games console, and if it’s specced anything like the Orbit then we’ll be ready to throw our money at them on day one. Of course, we don’t believe a Google console would either A) look like this or B) have anything like this level of spec, given Android’s ability to run on low-power hardware and Google’s cloud prowess (which presumably any Google console would harness).
But hey, we all like to draw pictures, don’t we?
[Joseph Dumary via Yanko Design]