[dagmx]

Steam Deck isn’t a console in any traditional sense unless we’re just going to start butchering decades of colloquial nomenclature . It’s a portable PC running desktop software from top down. Otherwise you might as well call my laptop running Steam Big Picture a console too.

When the other people are talking about consoles, any sensible person knows they mean things like the PlayStation, Xbox or Switch.

[CamperBob2]

So the key distinguishing attribute that makes a "game console" a "game console" is its walled-garden nature? Nothing else?

And not the fact that it's, you know, a "console" that can be used to play "games"?

[29083011397778]

> So the key distinguishing attribute that makes a "game console" a "game console" is its walled-garden nature? Nothing else?

Practically? Yes, IMO. You can say it uses specialized hardware manufactured on a massive scale, with each gen being a distinct set of hardware with slight variations, but then you're describing an Apple M1 Macbook Air or Microsoft Surface.

People have and will always gain root access, but the OEM doesn't typically like this, and goes out of their way to prevent it. There may be APIs the OEM leaves open to allow the creation of, for example, XMBC, but an XBox is hardly an open, general-purpose, computing platform.

If you want to call it a console that can play games, then my custom-build Linux computer console fits that definition. Hell, I wouldn't have to even leave the computer console TUI to play Dwarf Fortress.

[rhn_mk1]

Playstation is a PC with extra lockdown. So is Xbox. The Switch is similar hardware to Nvidia Shield, which is just another general computer (it can run Nvidia's version of Ubuntu).

So the differentiator these days seems to be running custom software.

Which Steam Deck is also running.

The remaining difference is "console = extra lockdown". That might be a good definition in general, but doesn't make sense in the context of the original post

> And only on PC and Mobile. Not on console.

[gunapologist99]

Another definition of "console" might be "specialized and/or custom hardware designed mostly for playing games" without regards to the software.

[rhn_mk1]

That definition also captures the Steam Deck. And I think it's fine. It exposes that "console" being separate from "general purpose computer" is either an anachronism or a marketing ploy.