Anandtech got a close peek at VIA's first attempt at a game console that was showing at CES. The internals are all VIA with the system put together and sold by Apex. Much like the Xbox, the ApeXtreme is basically a PC housed in a consumer electronics-esque chassis. The system comes complete with a motherboard, DVD-ROM drive, hard drive, on-board graphics and DDR SDRAM.

Unlike the Xbox however, the ApeXtreme does not try hard to hide its PC ancestry and in case you are wondering... yes, the 'console' is meant to run PC Games in the same DX platform, not a bad idea indeed but will it actually work for us, gamers?

Who's next into making consoles... Intel?
It's good to hear they are at least trying

Yeah, I'd hate to think that anybody with a potential good product would just roll over and die because the competition's so stiff. You never know.....there's always potential that the next unit could blow us all away....though I still haven't deviated from my PC for gaming.

thats a great idea from VIA. i hope it works. i wondter how much it will cost?

Seems as if a lot of people are going to take a (long) shot at becomming a contender in the 'Console Wars'. I can see this becoming a flop in no time - they'll need developers, and I dont think (good) ones will come by easy at all.

Hmmm... this could bode well for Gamers... BUT, it looks like they're trying to do this in a way that markets the PC as a platform of choice... just in a friendly little box for joe-schmoe user.

Not a bad Iea though... except they'd need to create a GUI for removing games you don't want so you can put on a new one.. etc etc... Doesn't sound impressive though so far without hearing about new features and stuff. Otherwise I'll just stick to my PC for a majority of my gaming needs.. I have every other sytem so far anyway!

Who cares if its a "computer" in a box, consoles play very different games, and some of us really enjoy them. PC or not, you wont find console games on a "PC".

I'm not too sure about this. The reason I prefer console gaming is mostly one reason, when I buy a console, I can rest assured that the games will all play as they were intended, don't have to tweak my hardware or upgrade it. Don't have to worry about drops in fps or anything like that. The games are taylored to the system. with PC games, your hardware is going to greatly affect the playability of the game and every game that comes out has heftier requirements than the last. If this machine is going to run standard PC games, then its either going to have to have uber graphics to have a lifespan even half that of a console, or they are going to have to put a graphics card in it that is upgradable.

They don't need developers, it's compatible with all PC games...